Friday, May 01, 2015
A Freedom of Information request has retrieved daily usage rates for the Emirates Air Line during the financial year 1st April 2014 - 31st March 2015. The spreadsheet is here, if you want to dig around for yourself. Don't you just love FoI requests?
The ten windiest/most disrupted Dangleway days
| | Date | Service
availability | Closure due
to wind |
| 1st | Tue 31 Mar 15 | 3% | Yes |
| 2nd | Tue 21 Oct 14 | 8% | Yes |
| 3rd | Sun 29 Mar 15 | 20% | Yes |
| 4th | Sat 10 Jan 15 | 27% | Yes |
| 5th | Sat 10 May 14 | 38% | Yes |
| 6th | Mon 22 Dec 14 | 45% | Yes |
| 7th | Fri 09 May 14 | 48% | Yes |
| 8th | Fri 09 Jan 15 | 51% | Yes |
| 9th | Mon 12 Jan 15 | 52% | Yes |
| 10th | Mon 02 Mar 15 | 56% | Yes |
The cablecar closed due to wind on 87 days last year, which is 24% of the possible total. Service was closed for more than half the day on only seven occasions, and for more than an hour on only 29 days. The month most affected by wind was January, with 11 days of disruption. March was in second place, followed by December, February and May.
The ten days with the fewest Dangleway passengers
| | Date | Passengers | Service
availability | Closure due
to wind |
| 1st | Tue 31 Mar 15 | 12 | 3% | Yes |
| 2nd | Tue 21 Oct 14 | 20 | 8% | Yes |
| 3rd | Sun 29 Mar 15 | 235 | 20% | Yes |
| 4th | Wed 28 Jan 15 | 511 | 95% | Yes |
| 5th | Mon 02 Mar 15 | 681 | 56% | Yes |
| 6th | Tue 02 Dec 14 | 781 | 66% | Yes |
| 7th | Sat 10 May 14 | 792 | 38% | Yes |
| 8th | Sat 10 Jan 15 | 1022 | 27% | Yes |
| 9th | Thu 08 Jan 15 | 1068 | 100% | No |
| 10th | Wed 07 Jan 15 | 1092 | 100% | No |
Yes, it's true, on Tuesday 31st March this year the cablecar had only twelve passengers. This equates to just six passengers in each direction, which is the equivalent of one cabin almost full. Equally minimally, on Tuesday 21st October the cablecar had only 20 passengers. Both of these days suffered from very limited service availability due to high winds (on 31st March, less than half an hour). The lowest number of passengers on a day with calm weather conditions was 1068, on Thursday 8th January. This equates to 1.3 passengers per minute. 15% of days had fewer than 2000 passengers, while 41% of days had fewer than 3000.
The ten days with the most Dangleway passengers
| | Date | Passengers | Service
availability | Closure due
to wind |
| 1st | Sun 24 Aug 14 | 11351 | 100% | No |
| 2nd | Sat 09 Aug 14 | 11103 | 100% | No |
| 3rd | Sat 12 Apr 14 | 10888 | 100% | No |
| 4th | Sat 14 Feb 15 | 10673 | 100% | No |
| 5th | Sun 25 May 14 | 10593 | 100% | No |
| 6th | Sat 06 Sep 14 | 10526 | 100% | No |
| 7th | Sat 16 Aug 14 | 10435 | 100% | No |
| 8th | Sat 19 Apr 14 | 10298 | 100% | No |
| 9th | Sun 04 May 14 | 10286 | 100% | No |
| 10th | Fri 18 Apr 14 | 10159 | 100% | No |
The greatest number of passengers in one day was 11351 on 24th August, the Sunday before the August bank holiday. This equates to 17 passengers per minute. Only eleven days saw more than 10000 passengers (one of which was Valentine's Day). The 25 busiest days were all Saturdays, Sundays or bank holidays. The highest number of passengers on an ordinary weekday was 8180 on Tuesday 28th October, which was during the school half term holidays.
The average number of passengers by day of the week
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
| 3285 | 3232 | 3323 | 3323 | 3822 | 7253 | 6398 |
On an average weekday approximately 3500 passengers ride the cablecar, which is fewer than 2000 in each direction. Weekends are roughly twice as busy as weekdays, and Saturdays are busier than Sundays.
The average number of daily passengers by month
| Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar |
| 5243 | 4463 | 4242 | 4990 | 7029 | 4484 | 4485 | 3617 | 2963 | 2936 | 4118 | 2998 |
The top month by far was August, which is peak tourist season and entirely within the school holidays. April was in second place, again probably thanks to two weeks of school holidays. Other spring/summer months had around 4000 passengers a day. February's average topped 4000 thanks to the special promotion which boosted passenger numbers over the Valentine's Day weekend. The fewest number of passengers rode in December, January and March. I've not counted the seven day maintenance closure in March when calculating these figures.
The total number of passenger journeys in the financial year 2014/5 was 1,544,679. This is 3% above TfL's target of 1½ million passengers. It's also lower/higher than the number of passenger journeys the previous year. Damn, I'm not sure precisely how many passengers the cablecar had in 2013/14. Perhaps someone could put in an FoI request and ask...
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