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• With around 50 days to go to the General Election, you may already be tired of hearing politicians promising little whilst accusing others of promising too much. Much more interesting/worrying is what it might all mean, and who might end up in power propped up by who. For daily updates on what the polls say, check out Ian's ukgeneralelection.com or the New Statesman's comprehensive May2015.com, or keep an rolling eye on how the numbers add up at electionforecast.co.uk. [the latter is currently predicting Conservatives 286, Labour 274, SNP 42, Lib Dem 25, UKIP 1]
• Time was when Top 40 chart positions were everywhere for a week, then became closely guarded secrets, accessible only by shelling out for the Guinness Book of Hit Singles every couple of years. That's until this month when The Official Charts Company unexpectedly launched a complete UK Charts Archive stretching back to 1952, listing every singles and albums chart ever, all the way down to number 40 (and beyond). Here for example is the singles chart from 50 years ago (It's Not Unusual) [but be warned, the dates given don't necessarily coincide with the dates the chart was live at the time, they're often "week endings"]
• I was in my teens when I first watched La cabina, a short Spanish horror film about a man who steps into a phone box and regrets it. The BBC only ever broadcast it once, but YouTube brings the slow burning terror to the smartphone age. It could surely never happen now. [director Antonio Mercer, 1972]
• With the rambling season nearly upon us, where precisely are the steepest hills near London? [for a broader picture, this OS map pinpoints all the Marilyns, Peaks and Minor Tops in the southeast]
• With apologies to Richard Scarry, the Tumblrfolk at Business Town are slowly revealing what value-creating winners do all day. [The Thought Leader articulates bleeding-edge insights within a relevant cultural narrative]
• It's English Tourism Week, an annual understated attempt to kickstart the sightseeing season. The City of London is running a few free walks and tours, mostly at weekday lunchtimes, or you could try Londonist's Self-Guided Food And Drink Tour by stepping through a password-protected observation quiz in the field [includes cut-price gin]
• What did your neighbourhood look like around the middle of the 20th century? If you live in the TQ grid square (that's London and a fair amount of the Home Counties), the National Library of Scotland have made available a set of 1:1250 maps to explore and expand. For historical research, or just plain mooching, this lot could be invaluable. [includes other locations and other scales, and twin-scrolling maps] [for example here's the Festival of Britain, here's the Dome, here's Wembley Stadium, here's Television Centre and here's Watford town centre]
• For a smart cartographical simplification of the capital, the London Squared Map depicts our city borough by borough.
• Or if you'd rather, dive into the UK & Ireland Rail Map Online, detailing the path of every railway line old and new across the country.
• If concrete is your thing (hi Dad), or if you could happily fill an afternoon ogling brutalist imagery, rejoice that the entire back catalogue of Concrete Quarterly is archived all the way back to 1947 and is freely available. [from Spring 1965, for example, enjoy the Royal College of Art, Automation on the Preston-Lancaster Motorway, Shell Roofs for Cape Town market, and A House At Harpenden]
I hope you've steeled yourself for the annual Dangleway maintenance closure, which starts today. For seven whole days the cablecar will be out of action to allow for electrical testing, weight testing and a full inspection of the sheave wheels. So in the meantime, here's an update on danglestuff.
• You'll be aware from repeated announcements that contactless payment is a great way to save time by avoiding queueing. Except on the Emirates Air Line, that is, where contactless payments don't work. There is "an expectation that they would be included in a subsequent phase", but for now you either need to have an Oyster card or a boarding pass, the latter acquired from the ticket office. If you've already binned your Oyster, as directed, rest assured that "most contactless payment cards can be used to buy tickets at the ticket offices at the Emirates Airlines terminals."
• Speaking of which, the ticket office at North Greenwich station will be closing for good next Monday. Or rather the ticket office in the ticket hall by the ticket barrier will be closing, because that's deemed unnecessary. Meanwhile the ticket kiosk at ground level will be remaining open, to continue its essential job of flogging tickets to tourists visiting the O2 who might not otherwise realise the cablecar exists. Then there's the ticket office at the southern cablecar terminal where a couple of red-jacketed staff sit in the warm and await custom, and of course the ticket office at the terminal on the other side of the river, that stays open too. The reason for the different treatment is of course that the cablecar caters mostly for tourists, and tourists need corralling and a lot of help, and is not in any way a hypocritical decision. Whatever, it might be fun to go up to the cablecar staff sat in their little box at North Greenwich next Monday and ask them to top up your Oyster. It'd be a futile pointless gesture, yes, but it might be fun, no?
• Have you read the cablecar's Wikipedia entry recently? Permit me a slight smirk...
• In the press release accompanying news of the cablecar closure, Dangleway boss Danny Price says "We apologise for any disruption the maintenance closure causes passengers." Normally officials apologise for any inconvenience, but Danny has chosen the word 'disruption' carefully because the only disadvantaged group is likely to be tourists turning up for a cross-river glide and discovering they've wasted their time. As for the tiny band of regular commuters, alternative cross-Thames routes are of course available. And they're quicker. Allow me to demonstrate using TfL's Journey Planner, with both journeys set for 3pm on Saturday 28th March (after the cablecar reopens).
What's more, that 7 minute time is definitely an underestimate. A cablecar flight takes approximately 8 minutes thirty seconds these days, that's from doors shut to doors open, so goodness knows where that figure of 7 came from. They don't even do the speeded-up thing at peak hours any more, or at least they didn't when I took a flight late last month, so I assume those former five minuters are now a thing of the past.
• As well as being quicker, a cross-Thames journey by tube and DLR is also cheaper. With Oyster it costs £1.70 in peak hours or £1.50 at all other times, which is at least half of the £3.40 the cablecar charges. Interestingly if you only have cash then the Dangleway is cheaper, at £4.50 rather than £4.80. Whereas if you only have a contactless card you'll be charged the reduced £1.50 by train, but the full £4.50 by cablecar, so screw you.
• Danny Price also claims, in his press release, that "Since opening nearly three years ago passenger numbers on the Emirates Air Line continue to grow". Pick your data carefully and he's correct, pick your data differently and he's incorrect. Here's a table of weekly passenger numbers for the last three winters, in each case starting with the first full week in January (after the schools go back). In each row, the highest ridership figure is underlined.
Week
2013
2014
2015
Jan week 1
21,130
19,636
12,172
Jan week 2
20,753
15,223
20,490
Jan week 3
15,996
19,387
22,786
Jan week 4
14,755
12,852
19,487
Feb week 1
16,400
11,965
21,569
Feb week 2
26,284
7,043
27,260
Feb week 3
51,046
43,181
47,675
Feb week 4
23,390
22,422
18,807
Mar week 1
25,289
24,894
22,413
Total
215,043
176,603
212,659
The overall story is of passenger numbers falling last year from initial highs, then rising again this year, probably thanks to increased promotion. There's a period from mid-January to mid-February where 2015 has the highest totals of all, but it then slipped back behind 2013 in the big half term week. Indeed for the last couple of weeks 2015 is at the bottom of the heap passengerwise, below even 2014, which may well be a reflection of the weather... or who knows, it's all terribly all over-the-place. But "The Emirates Air Line continues to cover its operating costs", apparently, so Danny probably doesn't care about a few insignificant ups and downs.
• You're probably aware of the map on the TfL website which shows current disruptions to the tube service. What you may not be aware of is that there's also a disruption map for the Emirates Air Line, hidden on a dropdown menu, and it usually looks something like this.
You can't beat a good old generic message about "the network", can you, even when the network's a mere two terminals. Perversely the map looks the same even after everything closes down in the evening (at this time of year 8pm), announcing a "Good Service" when in fact there are no cablecars running at all. Meanwhile what happens to the map in the case of disruption, say high winds or a planned closure? Well, the graphic changes, with the text box removed and the line itself shown in red.
It seems odd to display useful words when things are running normally, and write nothing when things aren't working, but that's how this system is set up. But what intrigues me more, much more, is the label in blue beneath Emirates Royal Docks - "Trains to ExCel". The whole point of the cablecar, you may remember, is that it was supposed to link the O2 to the ExCel exhibition centre. And yet here we have an admission that it doesn't do the latter. Apparently the cablecar drops you off at Royal Victoria where you can catch "trains to ExCel", which may only be a minute up the line, but it seems TfL don't expect us to walk. In fact the western entrance of ExCel is only six minutes away from Emirates Royal Docks on foot, which is perfectly doable by most people, but this graphic totally overlooks that. Indeed it suggests that TfL's preferred route from North Greenwich to ExCel involves taking the DLR at the end... in which case why bother riding the cablecar in the first place?
• And finally a confession. I've been on the cablecar a lotoflate, and quite a lot of you have wondered why. "It's a bit hypocritical isn't it?", said some, and "Does this mean you secretly love it?" said others. Neither is the case. Instead I was given a birthday present last year of a Multi-journey Boarding Pass, which allowed me ten free cablecar crossings over the space of twelve months. It would have been a shame not to use it, especially as this gave me the chance to report back on the in-flight feature tour, the app, the Snowdog and the Valentine's extravaganza. The only slight hitch is that my bit of cardboard didn't operate the gates, so I had to be let through by a member of staff each time after a) they'd noticed me and b) they'd clipped my ticket. My pass now has ten holes and has expired, so I won't be riding the cablecar so much in future, if at all. Should next year's passenger numbers drop, you'll know why.
Appearing in the Olympic Park from this week, a memorial to 9/11. It's been a long time getting here.
The artwork has been created by New York artist Miya Ando from steel columns retrieved from Ground Zero. It stands 8½m tall, and was commissioned by a UK-based educationalcharity to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11. They hoped it would gain a permanent site in London, with Potters Field alongside City Hall the favoured choice. Instead it was put on show in Battersea Park for only a few weeks before being carted off to a farmyard in Cambridgeshire and left there to rust under a tarpaulin. Eighteen months ago there was a bighoohah in the press about its disappearance, so Boris said it should be given a place of honour in the Olympic Park. He'll be unveiling the sculpture for the second time on Tuesday, on a mound above a car park round the back of the Aquatics Centre. Until then it stands part-wrapped behind a double set of barriers, a little forlorn, hoping to be appreciated.
Not everybody likes the Since 9/11 sculpture - it's been described as "a pile of junk", "ugly" and "an eyesore". However there's no denying the evocative nature of the materials from which it was created, hence what it looks like matters less than its actual existence. Instead what's proven more controversial is that not everybody likes where the sculpture has been put. The charity had hoped for a more prominent location in the Olympic Park, somewhere that'd have some presence, somewhere visitors actually walk past. Instead there is a definite feeling that it's been placed out of the way, in a somewhat tumbleweed location by an underused road junction, overshadowed by its surroundings.
A crescent-shaped mound has been created running parallel to the nose of the Aquatics Centre, at the sharp end where the entrance isn't. The reason that the mound's so long is to accommodate wheelchair visitors without the need for a lift. One access path inclines sufficiently gently to allow a nine metre change in height, while the other from the steeper end has shallow steps instead. The grassy slopes on the car park side are planted thickly with silver birches, accompanied by a cluster of northern red oaks, the idea being to create a secluded atmosphere of contemplation at the summit. The trees will also eventually block sight of the neighbouring roads and apartment blocks, but with the counterbalance that the memorial will become increasingly hard to see from a distance. All the planning documents arehere, if you're interested in digging a little deeper into the almost-enthusiasm behind the project.
If you're interesting in visiting, the easiest way is to catch the 339 or D8 bus which stop immediately alongside. Alternatively you can walk from Stratford station, either the ugly way via the bridge across the Overground, or by following one of the stepped pathways round the back of the Aquatics Centre. Alternatively you might see it from the train into Liverpool Street, sticking its gnarled steel fingers defiantly into the air. Or you could drive, obviously.
You'll definitely see the sculpture in the media on Tuesday, as Boris makes his speech and various news sites dutifullyrecycle the official press release. But if you don't see the phrase "car park" in their report, it's a fair bet the journalist in question never turned up.
I hope you've steeled yourself for the annual Dangleway maintenance closure, which starts today. For seven whole days the cablecar will be out of action to allow for electrical testing, weight testing and a full inspection of the sheave wheels. So in the meantime, here's an update on danglestuff.
