Why Is London's Cable Car So Damn High?
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- čas přidán 22. 01. 2014
- tomscott.com - @tomscott - Ninety metres above the river is really tall for a cable car. Why build it so high, and spend so much? Well, other than the Mayor of London being a bumbling buffoon, there's a reason it's got to be that high.
I love the fact that, after watching him for many years, I still stumble across Tom Scott videos I haven’t yet seen.
same here
love the seemingly endless supply!
Reportedly, only 4 people use this in their regular commute - mainly because it goes between two places that no one wants to go.
Tbf, TomSka uses it occasionally, it appeared in his last week series. On the other hand, that’s probably because his old office was in the worst part of town.
Let me guess, the two blokes on the day shift and the two blokes on the night shift for the terminal the other side?
@@daredemontriple6 I see the algorithm brought you here today!
I used to work on the ticket machines for the cable car. They were a pile of cr*p as well! Almost nobody uses it to commute because, as you say, it goes from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular, and it costs a fortune to park either end. It was, however, very popular with tourists (and people who liked breaking ticket machines).
@@christopherdean1326 Visited London, can confirm I used the cable car. (It'd be a crime not to, wouldn't it?)
You know what else is a vital part of London's infrastructure? The Springfield Monorail, of course!
The ring came off my pudding can
+Kingseeker Frampt Take my pen knife, my good man.
I swear, it's Springfield's only choice!
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
It's more of a Shelbyville idea...
There's nothing like a genuine, bonafide, electrified, six-car monorail!
Fun fact: If you travel alone, you get one for your self. Because I was getting in one, where it was one unknown person. I was then ordered to get out by security and then I got into another one, alone. It is a good thing, but a bit strange.
By a lot of the comments, the thing a lot of us didn't know is, London had cable cars
Cable cars are nice and all, but I think I'll hike up Mt. London the old fashioned way.
Giraffes pulling trailer taxis are what we need. Alpacas are way too mainstream as pack animals
BOdge JOb
BOris JOhnson... Coincidence?
omg it's Larry Bundy!
Bo Jo
Yes
MaJOnn BOu
Who would win toms jokes or one smart boi
Actually, I DID know that the mayor of London is a bodge job.
Mandolinic the current one can't keep track of returned ISIS fighters in his own city. 400 'untrackable' returned jihadists
Google User You clearly have no grasp of the separation of responsibilities. It's most definitely not the job of the mayor to keep track of returned jihadists - that's the job of MI5.
Look where we are now, a bodged parliament ffs
Google User What now?
Damn this comment has not aged well
What? I've been to London several times now, have done all the sightseeing, have walked along the Thames until my feet were sore but I have never seen or heard of a cable car in London o.O
was added for the 2012 olympics, is not very practical and is quite expensive, but you do get a view but I recommend going up the shard that is awesome,
Ah du auch hier^^
Sebastian Merkl Hi :D
Thomas Foster Niki Herl And the best way to go up The Shard isn't to go to the viewing gallery, but actually just to have a meal on one of the higher up restaurants, since it's something like £25 just to go up, and most meals can be got for around £30.
Thomas Foster What? The cable car is expensive but the shard isn't? You must be out of your mind...But I do agree with you, it certainly isn't practical at all and is significantly steep in price compared to the DLR which can take you to the same destination. If you do live in the Greenwich borough you get a nice discount though so yay me!
>Not British or from London
>How can he say that about the Mayor?
>Looks up who the Mayor of London was at that time
Oh, carry on.
Good news: no longer mayor,
Bad news: now foreign secretary
He is british
Matt H. means he isn't British, so he doesn't understand why it's politically correct for Tom Scott to say something like that about Boris Johnson.
the new one isn't much better
So is the Labour party. They both need to be replaced
It’s not too late for the name “Bodge Job Johnson” to stick!
Watching this in October 2019 - One the few times I did not need Tom to deduce facts about the one time mayor.
December 2020 is like ten times worse
@harry hound y-u-p but hope ye are all enjoying the amazing sovereignty! I'm across the water (ire) now looking left or right is depressing.
This video has aged well.. Boris is still the same 😂
Yes, but everyone in the UK gets to worry about his bodgyness now.
@@Thermalions ...and it's getting worse
That is like saying "then it was like a traffic accident, now it is like a gigantic pileup - well done."
Sounds a little bit harsh, doesn't it?
I was like who is the Mayor, and searched it and was like oh, I see
With the cable cars and giant ferris wheel it kinda seems like London is modelled after a carnival
I was on a school trip and then when I was on the cable car somebody had their... arse showing deliberately to the teachers and everybody :/
I've recently discovered your channel trough Computerphile, and I must say, your videos are the most interesting and/or entertaining ones I've ever seen on youtube. Good job sir!
Hey mate. Just wondering if you still hold that opinion?
Rare video where Tom expresses an opinion
Tom has stated opinions in his videos plenty of times.
But this is one of very few times when he is directly mocking a politician.
@@EightThreeEight Rightfully so.
That 60 million pounds could have gone to helping fix and modernize more of the Tube
Tom, just a couple of years ago, I stumbled on a video from you about pedestrian crossings. I knew about the change of paving, etc, but had no idea of the fact there was a device under the 'Wait' device that turned. I've been fascinated by your videos ever since and hope after lock down is over you can get out and do more. My favorite one is the CZcams one, because 1. I made the mistake of using incremental numbers in a URL (20 years ago) and 2. it is the "one take" bit at the end that showed you were a real fun person. I wish you all the best. Keep it up, I'm loving being educated in this way.
Remember when B⛎llsh¡t Boris just bothered London?
Miss those days.
Ain't that the truth.
Everytime I see the thumbnail for this video I think it says "Why London's cable car is so damn useless"
And it wouldn't be wrong
What is the flight speed of an unlaiden cable car?
African or European?
Macho Man Shark I dont know that!
The speed of a detchable cable car of this type is 5-7m/s
Das KillerKaninchen Sorry but that wasnt really my question. It was a reference to the monty python joke "What is the flight speed of an unlaiden swallow"
megaTHE909
only watched them in german so didn't understand :/
So it's ninety metres high... and that's STILL not high enough?
Goosnargh.
The tallest supports are 90m high. Over the middle of the river it is only around 60 meters above high tide or a bit less. Elsewhere in these comments I have seen a few sources linked and they vary from 54 meters above high tide to 61 meters above high tide. To put that into perspective, those great big cruise ships you see on Royal Carribean commercials stand 72 meters above the waterline and panamax ships (maximum size that fits through the panama canal, a common standard in shipping) have a height above the water line of 57.9 meters.
Goose being hit by a cable car?
I used to work next to the QE2 bridge. I've seen them fit an aircraft carrier under that bridge. The deck was higher up than the office building I was working in.
thanks for the new nickname I'll be using for Boris.
"Bodge it Boris"
Ah Tom, by now we all know what a bodged job Bodgis Johnson is.
Tom Scott has garnered a lot of respect for never putting anything non-factual in his videos, and when he does, making very clear that it is a matter of opinion. He even presents multiple points of view when a piece of infrastructure he's presenting has caused contention. So I respect him all the more when he states the fact that Boris Johnson isn't fit to lead a sensible horse, let alone a capital city or country
Boris Johnson - a mayor so bad even Tom Scott took a stand
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some serious embezzlement going on. Why does a city of 9 million people need a $77 million cable car system that looks like it can move maybe a few hundred people an hour at best.
If only construction and demolition worked like they do in video games. Messed up a project? Old piece of infrastructure now just getting in the way? Wreck it and recoup half the money it took to build it!
I typed this exact question into google. Thank you for the explanation.
*Tom's comments about London's mayor Doris prove massively prophetic five years after.*
"This is a customer announcement. The Emirates Air Line is currently suspended due to a large ship passing under it. Tickets will be accepted on reasonable alternative routes, or you could just swim across. Sorry for the inconvenience."
I just realised I made an unintentional: The Emirates Air Line is suspended - well duh, at about 90m above the river.
Radu Cristescu thats amazing
Yet another one in a series of Boris’ Bodged Jobs.
I had to see who was Mayor when this video was released. I get it now.
Low tide? I would have thought high tide would make the vessel taller.
I think the point is that the only time the vessel can get through is when it is both low tide and the gondolas are removed.
That was my question. So the answer is it's way worse wow. So for ships to pass through it has to be low tide and they have to take the gondolas off, that's just really poor planning.
@@Yossarian921 Actually this is perfect planning. The lowest bidder gets the job and someone presented a solution that just scrapes by.
@@Yossarian921 all around the world there are various bridges and things that are too low for ships. Some of them are designed to spin or go completely vertical to allow ships to go past. That's not poor planning that's good planning. Poor planning would be to either make the bridge much much higher (spending ridiculous amounts of money usually) or to stop ships completely.
Fast forward five years and now the mayor is the Prime Minister
Said mayor is now trying to lead the country through a pandemic and it is not going well.
Christ, if Boris was bodging things then, no wonder he's done such a sterling job with Brexit and Covid...
The Dartford Crossing - Britain's most hated section of road.
You have clearly never travelled on the A303 past Stonehenge on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend.
I actually did not know London had this.
One end is in North Greenwich by the O2 and the other is near the London Excel if you decide to visit.
Bodgeis Jobson
Bodgit Jobsagoodun
Thanks Tom!
Little did you then know that you got to enjoy this mayor as your prime minister a few years later.
Sounds a lot like the "Portland Aerial Tram" - a similarly expensive, really high up cable car. But ours doesn't cross the river, so we don't have that problem at least...
Plus, the Portland one goes over the interstate highway, so it looks really cool when out-of-towners like myself drive in and realize we forgot that Portland has a cable car.
From an engineering perspective and given the number of times such a tall ship would need to pass under the wires, this sounds like a well finessed design to meet the minimum height requirement at the minimum cost. And to be fair to Boris, the original plan for the cable car was approved in 1997 before there even was a Mayor of London.
I don’t get the low tide part. Wouldn’t the boats be highest at high tide?
They would, but that would increase the required height of the towers even further.
If a tall ship wants to pass, it has to wait for low tide so there's enough clearance.
London got a new Mayor, but it's not like anything got any better.
That's because the old Mayor became Prime Minister, so of course nothing was going to get better.
aww poor Norris, he only wants to tackle small Asian children while representing the UK...
As someone who doesn't live in the UK, I'm just assuming that said mayor was Boris Johnson?
That is correct.
I knew they had a height clearance because after London built one, I started thinking how great they would be here in the SF Bay area. Lots of people live on Alameda island and commute to the city, often driving over to the nearest BART (subway) station. The way the island is positioned would make an ideal 2 mile flight to a platform level at BART stations north and south of Oakland city center. It would be brilliant. But the US Coast Guard has a base in the estuary that the gondolas would fly over. And No, we would NOT be pulling the stunt of clearing the whole line each time a cutter leaves or comes home.
I had to take the cable car during a transit strike. Definitely high. Definitely not recommended if you have to be somewhere on time.
The Art of the Bodge...
Doesn't sound like the biggest bodge job in the world. It would be a rare event that a ship that big needs to pass through and it would probably involve a lot of other preparations if it did happen. Considering it is hardly a vital piece of infrastructure it is not like it will inconvenience many people like lifting tower bridge.
Whenever I take the kids to London we usually get the Northern line down to bank, sit at the front of the DLR , round to the cable car, over then Jubilee line to Westminster, houses of parliament, No 10, trafalgar square over to covent garden and then back up on a bus to the station (kings cross/euston)
It takes a few hours, is interesting and can be done on a travel card (except the cable car) - cheap sightseeing.
Fantastic view from there:)
I didn’t even know london had a cable car 🚠
Lifetime politicians are no different here in the United States.
Why the height of the Emirates Air Line needed to be 90 meters when the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge is 58 meters??!
Kestutis Rusas Cables dip in the middle.
Though I agree with everything said, I do find it a bit harsh to say it a bodge job. I'm sure there are other place where it is engineered in, that the load on a cable is changed to alter the clearance under it.
London's got a cable car? Where does it go? Aren't they usually used for getting up mountains?
I know I haven't been to London for a while, but I don't remember it being the hilliest of cities.
And that sums up the prime minister's covid response...
I found it to be kinda useful… me and my brother we’re on the dlr and we wanted to get to the O2, we hopped on the cable car and off we went for a pizza at Franky and bennies
tbh, i enjoyed the ride and the view. it's just nothing around the both end. (was O2 and excel nearby?)
the things that boris johnson did before running britain into the ground at a national level
Tom stood up that morning and chose violence. 😂
Bodge Johnson
Bloody Stupid Johnson, you mean.
+Michael Sommers That made my day. :)
Hasn't he gone on to bigger and bodgier things these days?
I thought he was very keen on Breakfast, I mean Brexit?
To be fair, that is the sort of bodge job you can describe of Tower Bridge, or any other lifting or swing bridge. When a boat wants to go under, we will lift the road up to make enough space.
Imagine telling this Tom that that Mayor would go on to become the Prime Minister
Bruh the cable car at night as amazing
the cable car has a good view though, and given that the london eye cost 70 million, I think it has some benefit.
its so if mr johnson gets stuck up there hes not coming down
after working on a similar but older model of Poma cable car system, garaging all the Gondolas take time and effort, so I assume it's routined so it's always closed at low tide? Or closed on days there are boats passing, can't imagine they garage all of them off and then all back on, the system I worked on took 40 mins each time and that had up to 40 gondolas
I thought i herd one existed before this & went all the way to Crystal Palace?
1:00 did you mean "high tide"?
I think its a fair solution.
No point in building it higher if its only needed once per year.
Same reason why you don't build streets big enough for random oversized trucks, but for average sized cars. If you have something unusual, well, they'll need special treatment.
When did London have a cable car?!
He's prime minister now. Look how far we have come.
It's evolving, just backwards
Brings tears to my eyes
Checking in from 2024, and a £60m cable car is a bargain compared to the cost of public transportation infrastructure in current times.
Now this, this is the greatest bodge job.
In DC, there is a proposal for using a cable car to go from Rosslyn (in Virginia) to Georgetown (in DC), because Georgetown doesn't have any metro access. $60 million shown here is a lot cheaper than the $2 billion quoted for rail.
Boris Johnson got the EU to pay for the cablecars then 4 years later convinced the country to leave the eu.
About ship clearance. At 1:01 you state vessels "coming in at low tide" . . . . surely the clearance twixt ship and car at low tide is greater than at high tide?
Seeing how long we've had quality "Something you might not have know" makes me sad to think it'll be ending this year. I'm glad that Tom will continue to make new and interesting videos (maybe something else, who knows?). Either way I'm glad he does what he does.
I didn't really know that cable cars or gondolas were used anywhere for transportation for anything other than touristy stuff. The only gondolas I've been on were to get up a ski hill and to the top of a Sulfur mountain by Banff.
There are few Swiss villages (eg Bettmeralp and Murren) for which cable cars are the primary means of access, and the new cable car from Testa Grigia to Klein Matterhorn, which is primally motivates by skiing and tourism will take many hours off local journeys between Italy and Switzerland.
So cutting corners ended up being more costly in the long run by having them down during tidal periods.
Ships of that size only come as far down the Thames as London once in a blue moon these days.
Can we have a video about 90m tall boats next
At least it isn't a monorail !
At least he didn't let those anti-gay ads go on the London buses.
Awoo Wan Wolfe III Thats a minus in my books.
Daaamn, shots fired!
Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
I'm from England, born in England, and never heard of this lmao
Ok yes it's 6 years late but I immediately thought height for the Tall Ships to pass under.
Tom came swinging with this one
And now he's our prime minister...
Oooooooh Tom swore in the title of one of his video I’m telling CZcams!
Pretty much sums up what? I couldn't make it out.
and that bodge job is now the prime minister
When I hear “Mayor of London” and “dangling from a wire” there can only be one name I think of: Boris Johnson
That and "Bodged Job" given the current circumstance
The most depressing part is that this mayor is now our prime minister
its called unchecked spending. They spend millions on things that people dont want or need instead of spending that money on infrastructure or thing that the city needs.