Danglegeek (2)How fast?
When the Dangleway opened in 2012 it was a two-speed service, offering 5 minute crossings before 10am and after 5pm on weekdays and 10 minute crossings at other times. In 2015 they also introduced slower 'night flights' after 7pm, this time taking 12-13 minutes, as a further nod that the cablecar was mostly a sightseeing service not a commuter shuttle. But how fast is it now, particularly at weekends when the faster it goes the more people it can carry? I did some observational maths.
All the cabins are numbered, and what's more they go round in order from number 1 to number 36. So I watched out for cabin 36 and timed how long it took to came back to where I first saw it, and it was exactly 20 minutes. Bingo, that's the promised 10 minute single trip. But I kept watching and the next round trip was only 15 minutes, as were the next, the next and the next. It means the majority of Sunday lunchtime's punters were only getting a 7½ minute crossing - even less if you count the boarding faff at either end. It's good news for TfL's accountants but less good news for the multitude of tourists who'd come here for a once in a lifetime flight and got less than they might have bargained for. If you're only here for the view, best come off-peak.
Danglewatch (2)Art on the Dangleway
If the view from 80-odd metres up isn't enough, various lumps of art are also scattered by the terminals. Some are courtesy of The Line, a meridian-based public art walk (which doesn't truly follow the meridian but it makes for a good name). Squatting on a small pontoon beside the northern terminal is the quirky sculpture Bird Boy by Laura Ford, a figure of a lost child wearing a bird costume. Close by on the dockside are three ink and watercolour panels by Madge Gill, fascinatingly intricate but also entirely missable. Those riding the cablecar can also listen to a specially commissioned audio work by Larry Achiampong - one 10 minute file for each direction - mixing an evocative soundscape with a "powerful narrative about the legacy of colonialism". Personally I'd listen to it at home rather than on an aerial dangle already overblessed with physical sensation, and that option is available too.
South of the river a completely separate hulk landed beside the terminal earlier this year. It's called Demon with Bowl, it's 18 metres high and it's a proper weird bronze sculpture with no head and a lot of emerging twigs. Damien Hirst put it together, as you may have guessed, and this is where it's ended up after first appearing at the Venice Biennale in 2017. Give it a wave as you rise into the sky on the Greenwich side (although it won't wave back, it's got no head remember). The other artworks on this bank divide into those that appeared for the Millennium and those that developers have subsequently introduced to jazz the place up, and generally the former are better.
Danglewatch (1)Cross-river cycling
Back in July a TfL consultation asked the public for opinions on "different options to provide cyclists with a dedicated facility to cross the river" in this part of London. It's all because the Silvertown Tunnel hasn't been designed with cycling in mind, for reasons it's now pointless to argue about. In mitigation they wondered if a dedicated shuttle bus service for cyclists might be a decent solution, although it'd also be fraught with issues, again mostly cost-related. My previously-stated suggestion, which I considered obvious, is that the Dangleway should be used as a bike transporter instead. It's in exactly the right place, its pods take two bikes at a time, it's not usually busy, it has very long opening hours and (most importantly of all) it already exists so wouldn't cost another penny. The only downside, as one of you pointed out, is that "at the weekends the queues can be huge". So I thought I'd test that out.
This is not me on a bike, this is a peloton of eight serious cyclists who turned up at Dangleway North late on Sunday morning. There was indeed a queue, which on arrival stretched all the way from the ticket window to the barriers, up the stairs and along the boarding platform. This is going to take a while, I thought, and wandered off while keeping an eye on the situation. It took six minutes for the first cyclist to reach the ticket gates and ten minutes to be let through and up the steps. After 15 minutes the entire group was upstairs, edging closer to the front of the queue, and after 20 minutes they'd all been packed off in pairs to finally start their ride. In total it took them a full half hour to cross the river and depart on the other side, which is both annoyingly impractical and perhaps no worse than waiting for a shuttle bus. Mid-afternoon I suspect the delay might have been even worse. Despite all this I still think the Dangleway is the Silvertown cycling solution hiding in plain sight, and hopefully its time has come at last.
Danglequiz (1)Bonfire Fright
With yesterday being Bonfire Night, the Dangleway was offering a special package for families to view the fireworks from high above the Thames. If you got lucky with your crossing you could have had an excellent view of all sorts of far-flung glitterbursts. But how much was the percentage mark-up on a normal round trip family ticket (£30)?
Those who stumped up the additional payment were promised a couple of extras, specifically a splash of seasonal in-flight catering. "As you board you will be served a mug of delicious Hot Cocoa," it said, "and a luxurious S'more to enjoy on your round trip fast track experience." I hope punters really did get a mug, not just a crappy paper cup, and I'm not sure whether the mug was a souvenir or you had to give it back for reuse. As for a S'more I had to look that up, it never having been a staple of my bonfire experience. It turns out it's American, originating as a campfire snack in the 1920s, and consists of "a chocolate bar and toasted marshmallows sandwiched between graham crackers." I also had to look up graham crackers. No indication was given of portion size, but having once sampled a Dangleway sweet treat I doubt it was substantial.
And the mark-up for this mug of cocoa and gooey cracker was phenomenal. Instead of £30 (for two adults and three children) the 'event' price was £75, i.e. a 150% increase. That is properly taking advantage. Admittedly the £75 also brought you priority boarding, an offer not normally available in a family package because they prefer to upsell per person. For two adults and three children the normal price for queue-jumping is £87.50, so you could argue families would be getting the cocoa and marshmallow for 17% less. But 8pm on a Sunday evening isn't normally a busy time when priority boarding is necessary, so there's really only one word to describe those who fell for this inflated cocoa con. Mugs.
Danglegeek (1)The tallest tower
There are three Dangleway towers - two by the Thames and another on the northern side alongside the DLR. It's easy to see which is the smallest (it's the latter, inland one). But which of the taller ones either side of the river is the tallest, or are they in fact the same height?
You'd think this would be easy to answer, given the internet exists. But the official cablecar webpage is much more interested in what height you'll be reaching in your pod, not the height of the tower, so merely says you'll "fly 90 metres above the River Thames". This 90m figure gets bandied about everywhere, very often as "up to 90m" which is extra woolly. Helpfully the TfL blog has a long page of cablecar facts and figures (which I promise not to overuse this week) and this states categorically that "The main towers are 90 metres high." It also goes on to say "The smaller tower is 66 metres high" so that answers that question.
Mace, who built and operate the cablecar, have their own project webpage on which they're very proud of their own contribution. They say "The two 90 metre, 570 tonne main towers needed to be absolutely stable for the service to operate safely", then go on to contradict themselves two paragraphs later with a Project Stat which says "93 metres high" instead. So the waters muddy. Meanwhile LUSAS, the engineering software company who originally helped test the cablecar design, say "the 450 tonne South and North main towers each stand over 85m in height." Their webpage is full of phrases like "eigenvalue frequency analyses" and "modal rotational inertia", so you'd think they'd know what they're talking about, but neither of their figures match Mace's data.
Wikipedia is often authoritative and claims to have data from the original Newham planning application. Based on this it states that the north main tower is 87m tall and the north intermediate tower 66m, so at least that last number matches. But then Wikipedia goes on to say "South of the river there is a 60m main support tower" and that doesn't match anything at all. So I've checked the Newham application and it plainly proposes "a north main tower (to a maximum height of 87.63m AOD)". The original intention had been for the north tower to reach +93.014, but City Airport objected and in the final design it was reduced to +87.630. Ground level at the base is 3.00m, apparently, so the visible height of the north tower is in fact 84.63m.
I then checked the matching Greenwich application and in the opening description it proposes "a south main tower (to a maximum height of 89m AOD)". But that number sounded rounded so I dug deeper into the 154 supporting documents and was (eventually) able to confirm that the exact figure is 88.84m AOD. That's above sea level, of course, whereas the south tower actually stands in the waters of the tidal Thames. According to the architects the height of the river here varies from +3.72m at mean high water to -2.71m at mean low water, at which point the base of the tower is virtually exposed. The top of the south tower is therefore only 85.12m above the river at high tide but maxes out at 91.55m at low tide.
In conclusion the south tower is the highest at 88.84m AOD, with the north 121cm behind at 87.63m AOD. It's also the tallest with 91.55m of metalwork exposed at low tide, whereas the north tower only rises 84.63m from the ground.
So yes, technically one of the towers is over 90m tall, but because gondolas hang down from the cable they never quite reach that elevation. Next time someone tries to suggest you'll be "flying 90 metres above the River Thames" I can confirm you won't in fact be dangling that high, not quite.
