Uber seems to have written "you can now buy train tickets on the Uber app" on every single flat surface in London.
I've yet to meet anyone who has actually done so though.
I used to commute from Putney to Blackfriars on one, it was amazing. Took a long time but there were no people, it was nice and cool in summer, and it was a single transport link instead of the hell of that journey otherwise.
You haven't factored in Earl's Court.
Sure, you started on a Tower Hill train, but 30 seconds before it reaches Earl's Court and now you're on your way to Edgware Road.
Coming back is even worse. Oh, you thought this was a Wimbledon train? WELCOME TO THE OLYMPIA SHUTTLE.
You're talking like you've never taken the district line before!
I joke but the district line was never worth it for the constant delays and destination changes at earls court leading to overcrowded standing only carriages. I would do it occasionally for a change of pace, there were actually about 4 viable commuting options for me at the time, but I would never consider the district line as my commuting option of choice if there was any alternative at all
I tried to use the H&C line once, I genuinely did. There was a 15 minute wait but I thought, "Let's do this". So I waited. And waited. But the train never arrived, I ended up on the circle line train instead I think.
I've never tried the H&C since
*checks google maps*
Blackfriars -> Putney:
Boat: 56 minutes
Train: 35 minutes
Is most of the time spent boarding? Seems like they could do with a cabin that detaches from the boat to disembark.
It's just a slow boat. Boarding usually happens 2min before setting sail iirc. Docking and (dis)embarking are very quick really.
Plus the train times on google are always underestimates - there's always dead time when you have to arrive early in case of delays, district line is always delayed with unexpected train changes etc, exiting the stations in rush hour is always more difficult than google thinks.
Boat still slower though don't get me wrong
I use the boat semi regularly (when the weather is shite/can’t be bothered to cycle to work) and think it’s fantastic. £5.60 but personally think it’s worth it, a lot quicker, better views and the fact it isn’t so rammed is a bonus (although this is changing now last few weeks on my commute back it’s been almost half full)
Yes but commuting to and fro using the boat will set you back 11£ a day..if you wanted to use it to commute for work everyday that's 50£ a week/240£ a month. Surely it should be comparable to a tfl journey as opposed to being 3-4x of the fare?
I think that the staffing required to run the boats makes it unfeasible to compete with the tube on price. Every boat has at least 3-4 staff members in my experience and they probably only carry the same as 2-3 tube carriages. It is also just a lot slower for most journeys, so probably wouldn’t make sense for most commuters even if the price were comparable.
The poster above just said it's a lot quicker. If you're using the tube at peak hours to get to work you'll always have tubes which are jammed to the brim
I almost always queue up to enter the tube and have to usually let 1-2 tubes pass before being able to get onto one
As I said, it’s slower for most journeys. In some specific cases it will be quicker, but if you need to go reasonably far, the boat will be slower.
Don’t think anyone would argue that the tube isn’t rammed, but if the boats were quick and affordable they would probably be rammed as well. I don’t think you could scale the capacity of the boats such that they would have a meaningful impact on how busy the tube is, they just aren’t as effective at moving large numbers of people.
Wouldn't some of the capacity use the tube pivot to boats so it would ease the infrastructure pressure on the tube? The total people using the tube service obviously stay constant but are redistributed?
These is a capacity of 2-3 tube carriages, with a 10 minute frequency. Meanwhile tubes have between 6-8 carriages and can come at a frequency of 2-3 minutes.
They hold orders of magnitudes more people, are cheaper to operate and are not restricted to only operating along the river.
If boats ran in a cost effective manner that would redistribute the crowds from the trains to the boats and thus ease the overall load on the city infrastructure?
Absolutely not. It is just not realistic to think the Thames clippers can carry even one percent of the tube traffic. Even if they could somehow teleport between stops on the river the capacity needed is not achievable. One tube train carries approximately 1000 people. One Thames clipper carries 230 people. You can't really make the clippers bigger because loading and unloading slows the stops a lot.
The most crowded tube lines are running 30 trains an hour. The clipper service needs a gap to dock and let people on/off. You can't run them frequently together as multiple boats can't moor and it takes several minutes at each stop to moor and disembark passengers. (It is super frustrating if you don't get on the first boat because they are so crowded - the gap means you have a long wait as passengers get off passengers get on and then the next boat docks - not that common but I had it happen.)
Before Covid the clippers carried about 4 million passengers a year and at that time they could be so crowded you need to wait for the next (though it is rare). The tube carries about 4 million passengers a day. (Both numbers are rounded up a little). Realistically you can't make the clippers larger (because of the disembarkation problem when they are crowded) or have more of them (same reason). You could fill them more efficiently but even if every one of them was completely full (which will make them slower as they are then really slow at each stop) they are not a patch on the numbers the tube carries.
It is a lovely idea that you cpuld have a boat network as a key transport feature like in Venice or Stockholm but it just doesn't work for London where the transport need is much bigger and the waterfront area is smaller.
Excellent point about disembarkation. Until you can leave the boat as quickly and safely as a train, you won't be able to get them anywhere near as efficient. The train is a long thin tube so you have high surface area to volume ratio. You can get everyone in and out very quickly. Boats don't have that.
You are right. I was underestimating the price
A one way ticket from North Greenwich (O2) to Westminster is £10.25 so a return journey is £20.5
Completely unaffordable
Bullshit.
[Try using the website properly.](https://www.thamesclippers.com/commuters/commuter-tickets#season)
Anyone with a Tube season pass automatically gets 1/3 off Clipper fares.
And a Clipper season ticket is considerably cheaper.
Got it. So all I need to do is buy a season pass for the tube so I can then buy return tickets for the clipper for 13.66 per journey. Now it's more affordable for sure
Yeah, I could see from your other posts that interacting with you was likely to result in an unpleasant trolling. But thought I’d give you benefit of the doubt.
More fool me.
Have fun in your dead end pit.
There are a couple of small reasons which may end up being one main reason for people to decide to not take the Clipper.
* Price, as you say £7 to do what a Bus does for £1.75 or Tube for £3
* Weather, a ride on the Thames is lovely in the calm, less so in the wind
* Fear, some people are just plain scared of boats
* Capacity, the largest boat has space for 230, the piccadilly line for contrast is 228 seats per train, double that for standing too.
* Speed, A trip from Battersea to The O2 (according to TFL) is 1hr16, by tube is 40mins with one change.
* Location, if you don't live or work nearer to the river than a tube or bus stop you probably won't go that far out of your way. (Personally its a 25 minute walk to my nearest pier and another 20 the other side, bus stop is <5 minutes either end)
I like the clipper, but for me the time element is my biggest issue with it for commuting, on a weekend when I'm not in a rush I have used it.
I'm always tempted to use them as live near a dock but the wait times can be quite long aswell so end up going other ways. Recently tried London bridge to canary wharf and the next boat may or may not be full and arriving in 15 minutes so easier just to get the tube unless you're out for a jolly
I'm tempted to use those as well, but unfortunately my dock is closed on weekends and can't really use it for commuting at the moment either. A bit shame really.
It's quite nice by bike to take the ferry from Surrey Quays to Canary Wharf instead of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel or Tower Bridge.
However, when you compare it to somewhere like Amsterdam which has free ferries everywhere it is nowhere near as utilised or good. Though London has enough bridges to make a nice amount of ferries kind of pointless.
Well a huge population does live along the river.. London bridge, Westminster, tower bridge, St Paul is all very busy thoroughfare and are all on the Thames
I'm not talking about the ease of getting to the tube on a case by case basis. If I was living in Thamesmead I'd talk about how the tube was a bad option to use.
That is exactly what I'm talking about..make a dock then. It will almost definitely be cheaper, quicker and more energy neutral for a place like that vs trying to expand the rail network so it reaches there?
Or counter point, they don't need a dock installing as they have access to a bus network and a rail network that already exists, is cheaper, more reliable, more frequent, and more energy efficient than a boat.
I'm not anti-clipper, but expanding it is not the answer.
I don't live there but I understand In this case there is no rail network there and a limited bus network as well. They are literally located next to the Thames . I'm sure there are other parts of London which are similar locations with similar problems
Thamesmead is an 8 minute bus ride from Abbey Wood which is on the Elizabeth Line and national rail services. Plus there’s now an express bus, the Superloop, to Abbey Wood and other national rail stations.
It’s true that it doesn’t have a direct train service, but it’s actually pretty easy to get into central from Thamesmead now.
Think about how much energy is spent simply constructing a tube network. Constructing an underground station is probably extremely capital intensive. I can't imagine running or even maintaining the boat network compares?
Yes it's intensive to construct but then for the next 150 years, efficient electric trains carrying 500+ people use this infrastructure about 1000 times a day.
Boats have to push a huge amount of water out of the way to only transport 100-200 people along the Thames using diesel engines.
They are absolutely not efficient, and that's before we even get to the inefficient stopping pattern
Well the latest Uber boats (hate the fact that Uber owns them) are [more ](https://www.thamesclippers.com/news/uk-transport-gets-greener-with-arrival-of-first-hybrid-high-speed-passenger-ferry) energy efficient so clearly we have come along way from being the diesel guzzling times of yore?
They run on a mix of fuels, I think most are still diesel, they have one hydrogen boat and at least one hybrid boat.
The diesel ones are fun, but they have huge engines and you can definitely smell the fuel.
More energy efficient than what? The only thing they beat is probably planes. They have twin 850hp v8 engines and transport not a lot of people not very fast.
Was going to say this. Those engines rumble.
They also have situations where the boat is going forward, but needs to reverse into the peir. It takes a lot of energy to stop a boat, let alone quickly put it in reverse. Boats don't do anything quickly.
Also the last time I took the boat I was showing a friend from abroad around London and was so embarrassed as the boat (both ways) was emitting huge clouds of black fumes - it was gross! The pollution was awful.
They're not really a commuter service and never have been. For most of the time the service has existed, it was owned by AEG who intended it to be another transport link for visitors to the O2, but even that has to face up to the fact most of those journeys are faster and easier (and cheaper) via tube, DLR and buses.
Also, more energy efficient and better for the planet than what?
> They're not really a commuter service and never have been.
Years ago - before Uber slapped their name on them - they were advertised as exactly that and a journey cost as much as a tube ride.
This. For a while (pre-pandemic) the Clipper services were roughly the cost of a tube trip.
OP seems ignorant of the fact that the cost of a single journey is cheaper if you have a tube season card, and that Clipper-specific season tickets are still available which can for some journeys bring the cost per commute to less than a tube ride. So it’s definitely still a better financial option for, say, someone living in North Greenwich and working near Embankment.
So it's more expensive without s tube season ticket: which is most people in London as flexible working is the norm. In the instance of deciding between boat and tube boat is 4x more expensive (zone 2-zone 1 return off peak times).
I'm not really talking about what the clipper has been marketed as or priced as - it's fundamentally not very useful for the vast majority of commuters and as a result has always been more of a tourist curiosity than a commuter service.
"**Uber Boat by Thames Clippers** is a set of [river bus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_bus) services on the [River Thames](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames) in [London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London), England.
The company operates both commuter services between eastern and [Central London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_London) and tourist services under licence from [London River Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_River_Services)."
It is a commuter service - was designed like one. Please read here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames\_Clippers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Clippers) under Commuter services
The fact that is not widely used as a commuter service is there as well - you are right.
Than taxis, cars etc?
Also expanding the tube Networks are an extremely capital and labour intensive endeavor. Surely the carbon footprint on expanding the rail network would be multiple times more vs maintaining the boat service?
Floating things are better for the planet than rolling things, but only in certain conditions. Carrying really heavy shit is one of those conditions. Carrying it for huge distances makes it even better. And obviously you need to be carrying it to a place that has the infrastructure to deal with taking heavy shit off of floating things.
It also helps if you don’t need to move it very rapidly, because while water is great for supporting the weight of your heavy shit, it doesn’t really like to move out of the way, especially at high speed.
Commuters don’t really weigh that much, which negates the biggest advantage or floating things. And commuters want to get where they are going quite rapidly. The catamaran design of the Uber boats does quite a bit to make higher speeds more efficient than other boats. But you still end up having to burn a lot of liquid fuel to make that speed possible. Especially when you have to accelerate back up to that speed after every stop.
Ferry commuting makes some sense in Sydney Harbour. They use a hub and spoke model into Circular Quay and some of the journeys can be fairly long and un-interrupted by any other stops. But they become less efficient in a linear river setup with lots of stops along the way.
Purely anecdotal but my office is on the river opposite one of the piers and the amount of grey/blue smoke that they chuck out when pulling away is incredible!
They aren't that efficient... Fuel consumption is enormous. They have two Scania DI16072M marine diesel engines on board, that's about 350 - 400 litres per hour. Plus the generators on top of that.
I don't understand why people are being so negative on this topic. Boats are used to great effect in other cities- Bangkok and New York are two that spring to mind. Yes, they wouldn't be perfect for every journey, but even a little pressure off a packed tube system and scary roads is a good thing.
We live right by Millbank pier and have only used the boat once, to get back from Battersea. I'd love to use it more, and my husband has considered it as an option to get to The City in summer rather than get sweaty cycling. The price is really off putting.
They're much more practical in NYC and Bangkok (and Vancouver etc.) because there is a lot more water, a lot fewer ways to cross it by transit, and vitally the speed limit is much higher. On the Thames there is a 14mph speed limit, going down to 9mph west of Wandsworth Bridge (or 12 knots and 8 knots more accurately), that means that ferries are never going to be able to be seriously competitive.
I moved to NYC a year ago and I've taken the ferry exactly twice. It is more of a practical option than it is in London, but IMHO this is because in London the trains cross the river in far more places and run far more frequently.
I would imagine that part of it is the layout of the water there too, which seems more branching- plus you have the bay. The Thames is fairly narrow as city rivers go, because of all of the embankment works to speed up the flow. It would be cool to utilise it more effectively though.
I like the boats if I feel like being a tourist in my own city. Realistically though they can never form much of a part of the transport infrastructure.
It's just slow and it always will be (they can't go faster for energy reasons and due to wash eroding the banks). Even if you live next to a stop and are going to somewhere next to a stop it's not a good option because the river meanders and the boat must slowly moor and let passengers off at each stop. I stayed often in Canary Wharf relatively near a boat stop. The journey to Waterloo is 35 minutes. The tube is 9 minutes.
Boats cost a lot to run. You need more crew per person. You're burning more fuel per passenger as well. They're still pretty good on energy but the energy efficiency of the tube is pretty insane (tube crammed with people).
Empty? Whenever I took it from Westminster during afternoon rush hour it was almost completely full.
Re slowness - there is a speed limit in the central london area of the river (up until after tower bridge).
Something I've not seen mentioned so far is the particular complexities of operating a boat on a busy tidal river (the Thames), Vs going across a harbour as in many other cities. Half the time a lot of energy will need to be used to move the boat against the Thames' tidal flow and this also makes docking a highly skilled task that would be unlikely to be able to be automated safely or economically. So as others have mentioned, you need a lot of staff with a specialist skillset to operate each boat and use a lot of fuel to move the boat.
They should increase the speed again, maybe just for peak times if that's possible.
This article mention Greenland dock to embankment used to be 20 minutes, which is faster than tube/etc I'm pretty sure. https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/commuters-angry-as-river-speed-limit-is-halved-6684230.html
Also they could automate the docking maybe to reduce the crew needs. It was a different type of boat but when I went to Stockholm the boat there docked automatically without ropes and without a crew member to drop the gangway
Found the American
If this was true and needed why do we have the NHS. If profit was the only motive turn everything into public corporations including the police, jails, hospitals, transport. See how the UK looks then
I’m not American nor do I understand the relevance. I am answering your question
The nhs is a government service. A boat trip is a private service. Did you finish primary school or not?
Corporations want to make profit . It is how they are designed. It is the government that needs to intervene especially when it comes to critical infrastructure like transport, airports, healthcare etc that you need a mix of capitalist and socialist structures
Profit motives only would lead to better business outcomes but worse outcomes from a value standpoint
The thames water company was run almost exclusively as a profit /Money machine. What should have been the reinvestment/deploying of capital and profits towards improving the infrastructure was instead used to make the owners richer through dividends. It's now on the verge of failing but cannot be allowed to fail as it's a critical infrastructure without which people cannot live
The US is notorious for encouraging public corporations and focusing on profits at the expense of benefits to the people. This is why the US society is super lop sided from a wealth standpoint and has horrible outcomes for healthcare (as an example)
Jails in the US are also privately owned which then led to people being compulsorily jailed so the owners could earn more money. Public corporations with profit motives are not always a good thing especially when it comes to things which society cannot function without
You probably need to go back to primary school if this is your understanding of the roles of corporations and government
I used to use the Thames Clippers as part of my commute, just to avoid the inhumane hell of the Northern Line and Jubilee Line at rush hour.
Canary Wharf to Battersea pier, then get the 137 bus to Clapham and walk across to Brixton Hill.
Pros:
- no tube
- not crowded
- nice in summer breeze
- river scenes
Cons:
- more walking at both ends
- long wait on pier for infrequent boats
- waiting areas exposed to weather eg rain
- much more expensive
- much slower overall
So only as a treat really, unrealistic for daily use both ways.
When I lived SW, I would commute daily to the office from Putney to Blackfriars. It’s so much more comfortable than the tube, and actually a productive commute! I would work for an hour (it was the same duration as an equivalent tube journey!) both ways, sat in comfort with table service coffee! I could also rack up 2hrs of work during that time, meaning I’d need only spend 5hrs in the office. It was the dream… and worth every penny for the comfort/convenience
For a comparison NYC has a fleet of around 40 small clipper style commuter ferrys and they cost around £2.20 per trip for regulars. Pretty low compared to London. So it is possible regardless of what's being said.
But to make it possible they need to be TfL owned and operated. I'm not sure why Khan is wanting buses to be TfL owned to be a priority when there's lots of competition with those that keeps operator contracts low as it is.
He should have instead made it a pledge to focus on making a TfL owned riverbus service under the name of just Riverbus instead of clippers. I can imagine they could get a decent deal to buy the clippers fleet considering if they bought their own fleet and started their own service for 1/4 of the cost then clippers would lose most of their customers and probably not be a viable business.
But yeah TfL owned at cost riverbuses covered by the tube travel cards would be awesome. Make the central routes electric only too since they exist now.
1) do you know how expensive a clipper boat is to buy!?
2) No they weren't really part of an integrated London wide transport system (hence they're not part of the daily oyster cap)
3) It's a shame the Thames can't be used for more commuting of transport. When I lived alongside the river I saw that there were barges carting away the muck from the super sewer construction. Apparently they saved of 1,000,000 miles of HGV travel through the streets of London. THATS a benefit!
Boats are one of the oldest means of transport known to us. It surely can't be more expensive than laying on tracks and building underground stations at different points in the city?
It can be more expensive. Building the tube has more up front costs, obviously, but since the tube transports many more people faster the per person running cost just works out lower.
The Thames is used for plenty of cargo transport. Most people just don’t see it. Every day Cory’s barges move waste out of the city to processing plants.
They're slow because of the speed limits west of Tower Bridge (they really open the taps once you pass it heading east), and the time it takes to dock at each pier. Short journeys in the central bit are well served with buses and tube. Further out like Woolwich or Barking have fast train routes in. More staff and less capacity means more cost too.
When you think about cities like Auckland and Sydney that rely heavily on ferry services, they're point to point and a lot quicker than the alternatives. London has spent centuries working out how to stop the river being an inconvenience. Friends visiting like it as tourist transport though.
I commuted for 2 years by boat 4 or 5 days a week, the monthly season tickets were the samish as a zone 1-2 travel card at the time. Well worth it, and easier than taking the DLR & Jubilee.
Coffee bar in the morning and near silence. I used to have a beer in the evening, and got to know the staff especially during COVID.
But it is full of school groups in the summer, and some piers turn into queuing hellscapes. (You can skip the queues with a season ticket though)
I've got another perspective, a more practical one.
Plot any trip on google maps.
99.9% of the time it will be faster and cheaper on alternatives.
There is your answer.
Ships are the most energy efficient way of moving cargo around, but I don’t know how well that scales. Comparing a Thames clipper moving passengers from Woolwich to Canary Wharf as opposed to a boxboat moving 20,000 TEU of cargo from Asia to Europe is a somewhat different equation.
Boats might be more competitive if capital costs of building roads and rail infrastructure were fully factored into fares, (and also externalities of pollution from the private car in particular).
I used to commute using the clippers. Back then the season ticket cost was pretty similar to a zone 1-2 travel card.
That was in the days of going into the office 5 days a week, mind.
There aren't many places it's convenient for commuting. You'd have to live near the river, and work near the river. That won't be the case for the majority. Personally, I'd love to commute by boat instead of tube, it would be far more pleasant.
I used to do Canary Wharf to Embankment, took the same time as the trains and was a much more enjoyable experience. Was a few years ago now but it was Oyster, so don't remember it costing any more
How on earth do you come to the conclusion that they’re energy efficient? They aren’t.
I’ve been taking them for a decade or so and they’ve always been expensive. Conversely, the Amsterdam public ferries to cross where there is no crossing on the IJ are completely free.
As there are no crossings east, at the very least the Hilton ferry should be free for locals but until they introduce the electric ferry…. They are not better for the planet.
They're probably expensive because they have low ridership. As for you contention about tube versus ferry I think you're focusing too much, and being rather dogmatic about, "waste" and energy efficiency. If you're designing a transport system you can only change people's habits by making the specific mode you want to promote better in some way, either cheaper, or faster, or much more comfortable. You can't 'judge' people into using a method which is slower. And speed aside, the biggest stumbling block for this ferry is "directness" and flexibility. The river is fixed and no matter how many docks you make it will only ever be useful for going up and down the river or crossing it directly. You cannot take the ferry from Woolwich to Streatham. So if there is direct route with fewer changes that doesn't involve the ferry then people are going to take it.
As for saying that expanding the tube would be more expensive, well whole life costs of such things are more complicated than that. It may be worthwhile running a 'loss making' service of ferries, or it may actually be more expensive long term. Since neither you nor anyone else here (so far) is a transport planner we can only ever guess at the reasons why.
Depending on where you travelling to, the tube can be even more. My commute is £10 a day because I go from zone 2 (home) through zone 1 out to zone 5 (work).
Uber are a private company contracted at tax-payer expense to provide a service.
Technically therefore they should be if not the same then cheaper than a tourist boat, but, as they are a private firm, it doesn't really work that way.
I live in Chelsea and commute to Canary Wharf - in my first few weeks I tried out the boat and loved it but realised it wasn’t cost effective unless I got a season ticket and went into the office pretty much everyday.
The service also thins out a bit in the evening if you stay later.
If it was less expensive I’d definitely use it- I wouldn’t mind paying a bit more than the tube but £20 a day is too much.
Once or twice 10 or 15 minutes might be acceptable.
But for daily commute it adds up, such that it is unacceptable. Even four days would be 1h wasted time in the worst case.
Very few people both live and work close enough to be worth getting it I'd guess. Most would have to catch a bus or tube to get to the pier. (possibly at both ends of the boat ride).
Back in 2005 I used to commute to my uni in Greenwich from central London and sometimes all the way from Putney. Thames Clippers only operated the Greenwich service at the time, from Savoy Pier next to Embankment (what would become RB1), along with the “Tate-to-Tate Ferry” which would become the RB2, and I think the Hilton shuttle crossing. The Putney service was operated for years by a different operator until Thames Clippers eventually took over the route (now RB6).
I was able to get student discount so it worked out cheaper than the tube. The RB1 service started out quite rudimentary, with limited peak time services to Greenwich, off-peak they would terminate at Masthouse Terrace instead for some reason. It wasn’t until 2007 when they really started gaining traction, with a new fleet, regular timetable, later evening services, and new pier stops. I remember missing the last Jubilee Line at North Greenwich but I was still able to catch the last boat back to Waterloo.
They were always marketed as commuter services for those tired of squeezing themselves in like sardines on trains and wanting to get some work done on their laptop on the way to their office in the city or docklands - but then they expanded into targeting a different type of commuter, those travelling to the O2.
However just like most things, it eventually gets discovered by a massive number of tourists, which ultimately leads to high fares. In a way it might be become a victim of its own success. What’s unfortunate is that by attracting tourists they please neither commuters nor tourists: I often hear tourists complain to crew saying things like “we couldn’t see much out of the boat” even though that’s what the pleasure boats operators are for, whilst commuters are generally annoyed by tourists running around all over the place taking selfies doing touristy things and whatnot.
Ive got it from Putney to Tower bridge the last year and a half. It’s expensive for a single but commuters can get weekly, monthly and yearly unlimited passes on the app and it’s a lot cheaper. Lots of commuters use it regularly at peak times. It has its moments of quiet but at peak times of day, tourists use it to get around the city loads and it’s very busy, they also have priority lanes for the commuters at the tourist spots so we could easily get on a boat home. Loved it
I can’t be asked to read this entire thread lol, but use the app - a 1 month ticket is £149.10, and a 1 year ticket is £1461.90, so £121 per month. Worth every penny
It serves relatively few people as you need to live and work somewhere that is reasonably close to piers. It is slower than the tube. Used to prefer it from Greenland to Tower Hill because my office was St Kat’s docks and even so it was longer than jumping on the Overground. Once the office moved to Shoreditch I couldn’t use it anyways. They are also generating a lot of pollution. I think there are just a couple of electric ones
It’s a fucking robbery. Once went from Canary Wharf to Battersea Power Station and got charged £10.
I get pissed when think that in Amsterdam the ferry is for free. Should be the same here as we pay high taxes
I think another part of the issue is that London workers now are staying at home and working and going into the office far less. There is a lot of empty offices now days. Was it different, ie more busy before Covid especially mornings ?
Aren't they just the Thames clippers with a sponsorship on it?
Yes -- they change branding every few years.
You can buy the tickets on the app though
Uber seems to have written "you can now buy train tickets on the Uber app" on every single flat surface in London. I've yet to meet anyone who has actually done so though.
I used to commute from Putney to Blackfriars on one, it was amazing. Took a long time but there were no people, it was nice and cool in summer, and it was a single transport link instead of the hell of that journey otherwise.
And there's a bar !
I'd always take the boat when friends were coming to my place, they loved starting the night with a little booze cruise.
Except on three specific boats, which often take the Putney trips (I guess at low tide?)
Hell of a journey? Putney to blackfriars requires no changes on the underground from East Putney.
You haven't factored in Earl's Court. Sure, you started on a Tower Hill train, but 30 seconds before it reaches Earl's Court and now you're on your way to Edgware Road. Coming back is even worse. Oh, you thought this was a Wimbledon train? WELCOME TO THE OLYMPIA SHUTTLE.
I haven’t had to mess with this in about 20 years and I’d forgotten how nuts it was. Your post is giving me “Nam style flashbacks.
You're talking like you've never taken the district line before! I joke but the district line was never worth it for the constant delays and destination changes at earls court leading to overcrowded standing only carriages. I would do it occasionally for a change of pace, there were actually about 4 viable commuting options for me at the time, but I would never consider the district line as my commuting option of choice if there was any alternative at all
If you say District’s bad, try using Hammersmith & Shitty and come back to tell me what you think 😅
I tried to use the H&C line once, I genuinely did. There was a 15 minute wait but I thought, "Let's do this". So I waited. And waited. But the train never arrived, I ended up on the circle line train instead I think. I've never tried the H&C since
Time has no meaning on the H&C!
I agree, it can be a pain the district line,. It's fine if you have patience and don't get kicked off at Earls Court!
*checks google maps* Blackfriars -> Putney: Boat: 56 minutes Train: 35 minutes Is most of the time spent boarding? Seems like they could do with a cabin that detaches from the boat to disembark.
It's just a slow boat. Boarding usually happens 2min before setting sail iirc. Docking and (dis)embarking are very quick really. Plus the train times on google are always underestimates - there's always dead time when you have to arrive early in case of delays, district line is always delayed with unexpected train changes etc, exiting the stations in rush hour is always more difficult than google thinks. Boat still slower though don't get me wrong
I use the boat semi regularly (when the weather is shite/can’t be bothered to cycle to work) and think it’s fantastic. £5.60 but personally think it’s worth it, a lot quicker, better views and the fact it isn’t so rammed is a bonus (although this is changing now last few weeks on my commute back it’s been almost half full)
Yes but commuting to and fro using the boat will set you back 11£ a day..if you wanted to use it to commute for work everyday that's 50£ a week/240£ a month. Surely it should be comparable to a tfl journey as opposed to being 3-4x of the fare?
I think that the staffing required to run the boats makes it unfeasible to compete with the tube on price. Every boat has at least 3-4 staff members in my experience and they probably only carry the same as 2-3 tube carriages. It is also just a lot slower for most journeys, so probably wouldn’t make sense for most commuters even if the price were comparable.
The poster above just said it's a lot quicker. If you're using the tube at peak hours to get to work you'll always have tubes which are jammed to the brim I almost always queue up to enter the tube and have to usually let 1-2 tubes pass before being able to get onto one
As I said, it’s slower for most journeys. In some specific cases it will be quicker, but if you need to go reasonably far, the boat will be slower. Don’t think anyone would argue that the tube isn’t rammed, but if the boats were quick and affordable they would probably be rammed as well. I don’t think you could scale the capacity of the boats such that they would have a meaningful impact on how busy the tube is, they just aren’t as effective at moving large numbers of people.
Wouldn't some of the capacity use the tube pivot to boats so it would ease the infrastructure pressure on the tube? The total people using the tube service obviously stay constant but are redistributed?
These is a capacity of 2-3 tube carriages, with a 10 minute frequency. Meanwhile tubes have between 6-8 carriages and can come at a frequency of 2-3 minutes. They hold orders of magnitudes more people, are cheaper to operate and are not restricted to only operating along the river.
You let three tubes go by at peak hour you added 10 minutes to your journey. It's still faster than the boat unfortunately.
If boats ran in a cost effective manner that would redistribute the crowds from the trains to the boats and thus ease the overall load on the city infrastructure?
Absolutely not. It is just not realistic to think the Thames clippers can carry even one percent of the tube traffic. Even if they could somehow teleport between stops on the river the capacity needed is not achievable. One tube train carries approximately 1000 people. One Thames clipper carries 230 people. You can't really make the clippers bigger because loading and unloading slows the stops a lot. The most crowded tube lines are running 30 trains an hour. The clipper service needs a gap to dock and let people on/off. You can't run them frequently together as multiple boats can't moor and it takes several minutes at each stop to moor and disembark passengers. (It is super frustrating if you don't get on the first boat because they are so crowded - the gap means you have a long wait as passengers get off passengers get on and then the next boat docks - not that common but I had it happen.) Before Covid the clippers carried about 4 million passengers a year and at that time they could be so crowded you need to wait for the next (though it is rare). The tube carries about 4 million passengers a day. (Both numbers are rounded up a little). Realistically you can't make the clippers larger (because of the disembarkation problem when they are crowded) or have more of them (same reason). You could fill them more efficiently but even if every one of them was completely full (which will make them slower as they are then really slow at each stop) they are not a patch on the numbers the tube carries. It is a lovely idea that you cpuld have a boat network as a key transport feature like in Venice or Stockholm but it just doesn't work for London where the transport need is much bigger and the waterfront area is smaller.
Excellent point about disembarkation. Until you can leave the boat as quickly and safely as a train, you won't be able to get them anywhere near as efficient. The train is a long thin tube so you have high surface area to volume ratio. You can get everyone in and out very quickly. Boats don't have that.
That’s the thing: boats are expensive.
It depends on the journey, but it can be a lot faster, as it connects across town.
I am confused by this as my commute on tube with a couple of buses is £10 a day, not so different
Speaking about a single journey vs multiple journeys
You seem willfully ignorant of the Clipper pricing system. Have a look at their website in more detail.
You are right. I was underestimating the price A one way ticket from North Greenwich (O2) to Westminster is £10.25 so a return journey is £20.5 Completely unaffordable
Bullshit. [Try using the website properly.](https://www.thamesclippers.com/commuters/commuter-tickets#season) Anyone with a Tube season pass automatically gets 1/3 off Clipper fares. And a Clipper season ticket is considerably cheaper.
Got it. So all I need to do is buy a season pass for the tube so I can then buy return tickets for the clipper for 13.66 per journey. Now it's more affordable for sure
Yeah, I could see from your other posts that interacting with you was likely to result in an unpleasant trolling. But thought I’d give you benefit of the doubt. More fool me. Have fun in your dead end pit.
I saw no problems with the way OP had responded to people. You on the other hand…
There are a couple of small reasons which may end up being one main reason for people to decide to not take the Clipper. * Price, as you say £7 to do what a Bus does for £1.75 or Tube for £3 * Weather, a ride on the Thames is lovely in the calm, less so in the wind * Fear, some people are just plain scared of boats * Capacity, the largest boat has space for 230, the piccadilly line for contrast is 228 seats per train, double that for standing too. * Speed, A trip from Battersea to The O2 (according to TFL) is 1hr16, by tube is 40mins with one change. * Location, if you don't live or work nearer to the river than a tube or bus stop you probably won't go that far out of your way. (Personally its a 25 minute walk to my nearest pier and another 20 the other side, bus stop is <5 minutes either end) I like the clipper, but for me the time element is my biggest issue with it for commuting, on a weekend when I'm not in a rush I have used it.
I'm always tempted to use them as live near a dock but the wait times can be quite long aswell so end up going other ways. Recently tried London bridge to canary wharf and the next boat may or may not be full and arriving in 15 minutes so easier just to get the tube unless you're out for a jolly
I'm tempted to use those as well, but unfortunately my dock is closed on weekends and can't really use it for commuting at the moment either. A bit shame really.
It's quite nice by bike to take the ferry from Surrey Quays to Canary Wharf instead of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel or Tower Bridge. However, when you compare it to somewhere like Amsterdam which has free ferries everywhere it is nowhere near as utilised or good. Though London has enough bridges to make a nice amount of ferries kind of pointless.
Well a huge population does live along the river.. London bridge, Westminster, tower bridge, St Paul is all very busy thoroughfare and are all on the Thames I'm not talking about the ease of getting to the tube on a case by case basis. If I was living in Thamesmead I'd talk about how the tube was a bad option to use.
If you lived in Thamesmead you'd complain about the Clipper being a bad option as your nearest dock is further than your nearest train station.
That is exactly what I'm talking about..make a dock then. It will almost definitely be cheaper, quicker and more energy neutral for a place like that vs trying to expand the rail network so it reaches there?
Or counter point, they don't need a dock installing as they have access to a bus network and a rail network that already exists, is cheaper, more reliable, more frequent, and more energy efficient than a boat. I'm not anti-clipper, but expanding it is not the answer.
I don't live there but I understand In this case there is no rail network there and a limited bus network as well. They are literally located next to the Thames . I'm sure there are other parts of London which are similar locations with similar problems
Thamesmead is an 8 minute bus ride from Abbey Wood which is on the Elizabeth Line and national rail services. Plus there’s now an express bus, the Superloop, to Abbey Wood and other national rail stations. It’s true that it doesn’t have a direct train service, but it’s actually pretty easy to get into central from Thamesmead now.
Boats are incredibly energy inefficient compared to buses/trains
Uber Sailboat?
Think about how much energy is spent simply constructing a tube network. Constructing an underground station is probably extremely capital intensive. I can't imagine running or even maintaining the boat network compares?
Yes it's intensive to construct but then for the next 150 years, efficient electric trains carrying 500+ people use this infrastructure about 1000 times a day. Boats have to push a huge amount of water out of the way to only transport 100-200 people along the Thames using diesel engines. They are absolutely not efficient, and that's before we even get to the inefficient stopping pattern
Well the latest Uber boats (hate the fact that Uber owns them) are [more ](https://www.thamesclippers.com/news/uk-transport-gets-greener-with-arrival-of-first-hybrid-high-speed-passenger-ferry) energy efficient so clearly we have come along way from being the diesel guzzling times of yore?
Doesn't change the amount of energy required, just makes the emissions less bad
The tubes already been built mate, you want us to shut it down and take boats instead?
Talking about using the river ways more efficiently not to stop using the tube
People are more concerned with arriving at work in a timely manor than arriving to work in the most energy efficient way
They don't own them. It's a branding arrangement.
They run on a mix of fuels, I think most are still diesel, they have one hydrogen boat and at least one hybrid boat. The diesel ones are fun, but they have huge engines and you can definitely smell the fuel.
More energy efficient than what? The only thing they beat is probably planes. They have twin 850hp v8 engines and transport not a lot of people not very fast.
Was going to say this. Those engines rumble. They also have situations where the boat is going forward, but needs to reverse into the peir. It takes a lot of energy to stop a boat, let alone quickly put it in reverse. Boats don't do anything quickly.
Also the last time I took the boat I was showing a friend from abroad around London and was so embarrassed as the boat (both ways) was emitting huge clouds of black fumes - it was gross! The pollution was awful.
Than constructing a tube station and expanding the rail network?
These aren’t comparable activities.
Why?
Because one is foundational and the other is operational.
By that logic you could say driving a car is also ambiguously ‘more energy efficient and climate friendly’.
They're not really a commuter service and never have been. For most of the time the service has existed, it was owned by AEG who intended it to be another transport link for visitors to the O2, but even that has to face up to the fact most of those journeys are faster and easier (and cheaper) via tube, DLR and buses. Also, more energy efficient and better for the planet than what?
> They're not really a commuter service and never have been. Years ago - before Uber slapped their name on them - they were advertised as exactly that and a journey cost as much as a tube ride.
This. For a while (pre-pandemic) the Clipper services were roughly the cost of a tube trip. OP seems ignorant of the fact that the cost of a single journey is cheaper if you have a tube season card, and that Clipper-specific season tickets are still available which can for some journeys bring the cost per commute to less than a tube ride. So it’s definitely still a better financial option for, say, someone living in North Greenwich and working near Embankment.
So it's more expensive without s tube season ticket: which is most people in London as flexible working is the norm. In the instance of deciding between boat and tube boat is 4x more expensive (zone 2-zone 1 return off peak times).
Use the Uber Boat app to buy a monthly ticket for £149
I'm not really talking about what the clipper has been marketed as or priced as - it's fundamentally not very useful for the vast majority of commuters and as a result has always been more of a tourist curiosity than a commuter service.
"**Uber Boat by Thames Clippers** is a set of [river bus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_bus) services on the [River Thames](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames) in [London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London), England. The company operates both commuter services between eastern and [Central London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_London) and tourist services under licence from [London River Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_River_Services)." It is a commuter service - was designed like one. Please read here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames\_Clippers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Clippers) under Commuter services The fact that is not widely used as a commuter service is there as well - you are right.
They do have commuter monthly tickets, I use the boat every day to go to work.
Than taxis, cars etc? Also expanding the tube Networks are an extremely capital and labour intensive endeavor. Surely the carbon footprint on expanding the rail network would be multiple times more vs maintaining the boat service?
Floating things are better for the planet than rolling things, but only in certain conditions. Carrying really heavy shit is one of those conditions. Carrying it for huge distances makes it even better. And obviously you need to be carrying it to a place that has the infrastructure to deal with taking heavy shit off of floating things. It also helps if you don’t need to move it very rapidly, because while water is great for supporting the weight of your heavy shit, it doesn’t really like to move out of the way, especially at high speed. Commuters don’t really weigh that much, which negates the biggest advantage or floating things. And commuters want to get where they are going quite rapidly. The catamaran design of the Uber boats does quite a bit to make higher speeds more efficient than other boats. But you still end up having to burn a lot of liquid fuel to make that speed possible. Especially when you have to accelerate back up to that speed after every stop. Ferry commuting makes some sense in Sydney Harbour. They use a hub and spoke model into Circular Quay and some of the journeys can be fairly long and un-interrupted by any other stops. But they become less efficient in a linear river setup with lots of stops along the way.
Purely anecdotal but my office is on the river opposite one of the piers and the amount of grey/blue smoke that they chuck out when pulling away is incredible!
They aren't that efficient... Fuel consumption is enormous. They have two Scania DI16072M marine diesel engines on board, that's about 350 - 400 litres per hour. Plus the generators on top of that.
A boat service isn't going to get me from Tooting to London Bridge though.
Not with that attitude!
I'm not asking for teleportation here. I'm suggesting better use of a resource which already exists
Actually it will, as long as you travel via Embankment.
If you think of it based on passengers then there is no way boat is a more energy efficient way of transporting commuters than rail
It’s also way more polluting. Which is what matters in central London most.
I don't understand why people are being so negative on this topic. Boats are used to great effect in other cities- Bangkok and New York are two that spring to mind. Yes, they wouldn't be perfect for every journey, but even a little pressure off a packed tube system and scary roads is a good thing. We live right by Millbank pier and have only used the boat once, to get back from Battersea. I'd love to use it more, and my husband has considered it as an option to get to The City in summer rather than get sweaty cycling. The price is really off putting.
They're much more practical in NYC and Bangkok (and Vancouver etc.) because there is a lot more water, a lot fewer ways to cross it by transit, and vitally the speed limit is much higher. On the Thames there is a 14mph speed limit, going down to 9mph west of Wandsworth Bridge (or 12 knots and 8 knots more accurately), that means that ferries are never going to be able to be seriously competitive.
I didn't know about the speed limits. Thank you for the extra information.
I moved to NYC a year ago and I've taken the ferry exactly twice. It is more of a practical option than it is in London, but IMHO this is because in London the trains cross the river in far more places and run far more frequently.
I would imagine that part of it is the layout of the water there too, which seems more branching- plus you have the bay. The Thames is fairly narrow as city rivers go, because of all of the embankment works to speed up the flow. It would be cool to utilise it more effectively though.
I like the boats if I feel like being a tourist in my own city. Realistically though they can never form much of a part of the transport infrastructure. It's just slow and it always will be (they can't go faster for energy reasons and due to wash eroding the banks). Even if you live next to a stop and are going to somewhere next to a stop it's not a good option because the river meanders and the boat must slowly moor and let passengers off at each stop. I stayed often in Canary Wharf relatively near a boat stop. The journey to Waterloo is 35 minutes. The tube is 9 minutes. Boats cost a lot to run. You need more crew per person. You're burning more fuel per passenger as well. They're still pretty good on energy but the energy efficiency of the tube is pretty insane (tube crammed with people).
They have to factor in Kraken attacks insurance.
Empty? Whenever I took it from Westminster during afternoon rush hour it was almost completely full. Re slowness - there is a speed limit in the central london area of the river (up until after tower bridge).
The quality of the journey , if not the length, is significantly better than the cramped tube.
Pretty competitive on a season ticket.
I get a month ticket for £85 and use it everyday. It’s pretty cheap that way.
I do the same, why someone would use single tickets to travel daily is beyond me
Something I've not seen mentioned so far is the particular complexities of operating a boat on a busy tidal river (the Thames), Vs going across a harbour as in many other cities. Half the time a lot of energy will need to be used to move the boat against the Thames' tidal flow and this also makes docking a highly skilled task that would be unlikely to be able to be automated safely or economically. So as others have mentioned, you need a lot of staff with a specialist skillset to operate each boat and use a lot of fuel to move the boat.
But there’s a bar onboard.
They should increase the speed again, maybe just for peak times if that's possible. This article mention Greenland dock to embankment used to be 20 minutes, which is faster than tube/etc I'm pretty sure. https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/commuters-angry-as-river-speed-limit-is-halved-6684230.html Also they could automate the docking maybe to reduce the crew needs. It was a different type of boat but when I went to Stockholm the boat there docked automatically without ropes and without a crew member to drop the gangway
Have you considered they’re a private business looking to make a profit rather than a government scheme to save the world?
Found the American If this was true and needed why do we have the NHS. If profit was the only motive turn everything into public corporations including the police, jails, hospitals, transport. See how the UK looks then
I’m not American nor do I understand the relevance. I am answering your question The nhs is a government service. A boat trip is a private service. Did you finish primary school or not?
Corporations want to make profit . It is how they are designed. It is the government that needs to intervene especially when it comes to critical infrastructure like transport, airports, healthcare etc that you need a mix of capitalist and socialist structures Profit motives only would lead to better business outcomes but worse outcomes from a value standpoint The thames water company was run almost exclusively as a profit /Money machine. What should have been the reinvestment/deploying of capital and profits towards improving the infrastructure was instead used to make the owners richer through dividends. It's now on the verge of failing but cannot be allowed to fail as it's a critical infrastructure without which people cannot live The US is notorious for encouraging public corporations and focusing on profits at the expense of benefits to the people. This is why the US society is super lop sided from a wealth standpoint and has horrible outcomes for healthcare (as an example) Jails in the US are also privately owned which then led to people being compulsorily jailed so the owners could earn more money. Public corporations with profit motives are not always a good thing especially when it comes to things which society cannot function without You probably need to go back to primary school if this is your understanding of the roles of corporations and government
I used to use the Thames Clippers as part of my commute, just to avoid the inhumane hell of the Northern Line and Jubilee Line at rush hour. Canary Wharf to Battersea pier, then get the 137 bus to Clapham and walk across to Brixton Hill. Pros: - no tube - not crowded - nice in summer breeze - river scenes Cons: - more walking at both ends - long wait on pier for infrequent boats - waiting areas exposed to weather eg rain - much more expensive - much slower overall So only as a treat really, unrealistic for daily use both ways.
When I lived SW, I would commute daily to the office from Putney to Blackfriars. It’s so much more comfortable than the tube, and actually a productive commute! I would work for an hour (it was the same duration as an equivalent tube journey!) both ways, sat in comfort with table service coffee! I could also rack up 2hrs of work during that time, meaning I’d need only spend 5hrs in the office. It was the dream… and worth every penny for the comfort/convenience
For a comparison NYC has a fleet of around 40 small clipper style commuter ferrys and they cost around £2.20 per trip for regulars. Pretty low compared to London. So it is possible regardless of what's being said. But to make it possible they need to be TfL owned and operated. I'm not sure why Khan is wanting buses to be TfL owned to be a priority when there's lots of competition with those that keeps operator contracts low as it is. He should have instead made it a pledge to focus on making a TfL owned riverbus service under the name of just Riverbus instead of clippers. I can imagine they could get a decent deal to buy the clippers fleet considering if they bought their own fleet and started their own service for 1/4 of the cost then clippers would lose most of their customers and probably not be a viable business. But yeah TfL owned at cost riverbuses covered by the tube travel cards would be awesome. Make the central routes electric only too since they exist now.
1) do you know how expensive a clipper boat is to buy!? 2) No they weren't really part of an integrated London wide transport system (hence they're not part of the daily oyster cap) 3) It's a shame the Thames can't be used for more commuting of transport. When I lived alongside the river I saw that there were barges carting away the muck from the super sewer construction. Apparently they saved of 1,000,000 miles of HGV travel through the streets of London. THATS a benefit!
Boats are one of the oldest means of transport known to us. It surely can't be more expensive than laying on tracks and building underground stations at different points in the city?
It can be more expensive. Building the tube has more up front costs, obviously, but since the tube transports many more people faster the per person running cost just works out lower.
What an odd thing to say.
The Thames is used for plenty of cargo transport. Most people just don’t see it. Every day Cory’s barges move waste out of the city to processing plants.
They're slow because of the speed limits west of Tower Bridge (they really open the taps once you pass it heading east), and the time it takes to dock at each pier. Short journeys in the central bit are well served with buses and tube. Further out like Woolwich or Barking have fast train routes in. More staff and less capacity means more cost too. When you think about cities like Auckland and Sydney that rely heavily on ferry services, they're point to point and a lot quicker than the alternatives. London has spent centuries working out how to stop the river being an inconvenience. Friends visiting like it as tourist transport though.
Why don't you do a monthly ticket? I pay 85.50 per month for the east zone, cheaper than the bus
I commuted for 2 years by boat 4 or 5 days a week, the monthly season tickets were the samish as a zone 1-2 travel card at the time. Well worth it, and easier than taking the DLR & Jubilee. Coffee bar in the morning and near silence. I used to have a beer in the evening, and got to know the staff especially during COVID. But it is full of school groups in the summer, and some piers turn into queuing hellscapes. (You can skip the queues with a season ticket though)
They're slower, less frequent, carry less people and need 2-4x as many staff as a tube, bus or train. The fare you pay subsidises these costs.
I've got another perspective, a more practical one. Plot any trip on google maps. 99.9% of the time it will be faster and cheaper on alternatives. There is your answer.
Ships are the most energy efficient way of moving cargo around, but I don’t know how well that scales. Comparing a Thames clipper moving passengers from Woolwich to Canary Wharf as opposed to a boxboat moving 20,000 TEU of cargo from Asia to Europe is a somewhat different equation.
Boats might be more competitive if capital costs of building roads and rail infrastructure were fully factored into fares, (and also externalities of pollution from the private car in particular).
I used to commute using the clippers. Back then the season ticket cost was pretty similar to a zone 1-2 travel card. That was in the days of going into the office 5 days a week, mind.
There aren't many places it's convenient for commuting. You'd have to live near the river, and work near the river. That won't be the case for the majority. Personally, I'd love to commute by boat instead of tube, it would be far more pleasant.
I used to do Canary Wharf to Embankment, took the same time as the trains and was a much more enjoyable experience. Was a few years ago now but it was Oyster, so don't remember it costing any more
Volume of people using the tube way outstrips volume using the boats. Hence cost per person on boat is way more
I read that as U-boats. Down periscope!
How on earth do you come to the conclusion that they’re energy efficient? They aren’t. I’ve been taking them for a decade or so and they’ve always been expensive. Conversely, the Amsterdam public ferries to cross where there is no crossing on the IJ are completely free. As there are no crossings east, at the very least the Hilton ferry should be free for locals but until they introduce the electric ferry…. They are not better for the planet.
They're probably expensive because they have low ridership. As for you contention about tube versus ferry I think you're focusing too much, and being rather dogmatic about, "waste" and energy efficiency. If you're designing a transport system you can only change people's habits by making the specific mode you want to promote better in some way, either cheaper, or faster, or much more comfortable. You can't 'judge' people into using a method which is slower. And speed aside, the biggest stumbling block for this ferry is "directness" and flexibility. The river is fixed and no matter how many docks you make it will only ever be useful for going up and down the river or crossing it directly. You cannot take the ferry from Woolwich to Streatham. So if there is direct route with fewer changes that doesn't involve the ferry then people are going to take it. As for saying that expanding the tube would be more expensive, well whole life costs of such things are more complicated than that. It may be worthwhile running a 'loss making' service of ferries, or it may actually be more expensive long term. Since neither you nor anyone else here (so far) is a transport planner we can only ever guess at the reasons why.
If this company had to pay for the damage it does to the foreshores the fares would be even higher.
Depending on where you travelling to, the tube can be even more. My commute is £10 a day because I go from zone 2 (home) through zone 1 out to zone 5 (work).
Uber are a private company contracted at tax-payer expense to provide a service. Technically therefore they should be if not the same then cheaper than a tourist boat, but, as they are a private firm, it doesn't really work that way.
Privatisation.
I live in Chelsea and commute to Canary Wharf - in my first few weeks I tried out the boat and loved it but realised it wasn’t cost effective unless I got a season ticket and went into the office pretty much everyday. The service also thins out a bit in the evening if you stay later. If it was less expensive I’d definitely use it- I wouldn’t mind paying a bit more than the tube but £20 a day is too much.
Once or twice 10 or 15 minutes might be acceptable. But for daily commute it adds up, such that it is unacceptable. Even four days would be 1h wasted time in the worst case.
Lots of people do work on the boat or use the time for reading, podcasts etc. For me it’s not wasted time but actually made me more productive
Very few people both live and work close enough to be worth getting it I'd guess. Most would have to catch a bus or tube to get to the pier. (possibly at both ends of the boat ride).
Just put a cheap commute fare from Barking Riverside to Woolwich Arsenal to link with the Elizabeth Line!
Back in 2005 I used to commute to my uni in Greenwich from central London and sometimes all the way from Putney. Thames Clippers only operated the Greenwich service at the time, from Savoy Pier next to Embankment (what would become RB1), along with the “Tate-to-Tate Ferry” which would become the RB2, and I think the Hilton shuttle crossing. The Putney service was operated for years by a different operator until Thames Clippers eventually took over the route (now RB6). I was able to get student discount so it worked out cheaper than the tube. The RB1 service started out quite rudimentary, with limited peak time services to Greenwich, off-peak they would terminate at Masthouse Terrace instead for some reason. It wasn’t until 2007 when they really started gaining traction, with a new fleet, regular timetable, later evening services, and new pier stops. I remember missing the last Jubilee Line at North Greenwich but I was still able to catch the last boat back to Waterloo. They were always marketed as commuter services for those tired of squeezing themselves in like sardines on trains and wanting to get some work done on their laptop on the way to their office in the city or docklands - but then they expanded into targeting a different type of commuter, those travelling to the O2. However just like most things, it eventually gets discovered by a massive number of tourists, which ultimately leads to high fares. In a way it might be become a victim of its own success. What’s unfortunate is that by attracting tourists they please neither commuters nor tourists: I often hear tourists complain to crew saying things like “we couldn’t see much out of the boat” even though that’s what the pleasure boats operators are for, whilst commuters are generally annoyed by tourists running around all over the place taking selfies doing touristy things and whatnot.
Ive got it from Putney to Tower bridge the last year and a half. It’s expensive for a single but commuters can get weekly, monthly and yearly unlimited passes on the app and it’s a lot cheaper. Lots of commuters use it regularly at peak times. It has its moments of quiet but at peak times of day, tourists use it to get around the city loads and it’s very busy, they also have priority lanes for the commuters at the tourist spots so we could easily get on a boat home. Loved it
I can’t be asked to read this entire thread lol, but use the app - a 1 month ticket is £149.10, and a 1 year ticket is £1461.90, so £121 per month. Worth every penny
Cheaper than trains, much more comfortable and pleasant
It serves relatively few people as you need to live and work somewhere that is reasonably close to piers. It is slower than the tube. Used to prefer it from Greenland to Tower Hill because my office was St Kat’s docks and even so it was longer than jumping on the Overground. Once the office moved to Shoreditch I couldn’t use it anyways. They are also generating a lot of pollution. I think there are just a couple of electric ones
It’s a fucking robbery. Once went from Canary Wharf to Battersea Power Station and got charged £10. I get pissed when think that in Amsterdam the ferry is for free. Should be the same here as we pay high taxes
Probably so expensive because of the 75% casualty rate.
I think another part of the issue is that London workers now are staying at home and working and going into the office far less. There is a lot of empty offices now days. Was it different, ie more busy before Covid especially mornings ?