Cable Car

The London Cable Car opened on June 28, 2012.

It consists of 36 gondolas, two of which are kept in reserve, that travel along a 3,600 ft (1,100 m) cable, to a height of 300 ft (90 m), at a speed of 14 mph (22.5 km/h).

The cable car can move up to 5,000 people per hour. That’s the same as nearly 60 double decker buses.

The cabins weigh almost another 40 tons, passengers (when cabins are full) add almost another 25 tons, and the wind, even on a mild day, can mean that the drive motor for the cableway is moving up to 200 tons. That’s the same as almost 75 adult elephants! 

The main towers are 90 metres high. That’s the same height as 20 double decker buses stacked on top of each other. The smaller tower is 66 metres high. 

The main haul rope is a single loop that is 2.2 km long. If stretched out it would be more than seven times taller than the Shard, and more than twice as tall as the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. 

Each cabin can lift 750 kg of passengers.

The crawler cranes used to build the main towers came on over 70 flat-bed lorries and were so large that the one on the North bank appeared in the radar of London City Airport when at full height.

The concrete base of the South Tower (the one in the Thames) weighs over 100 tons. It was so heavy that it couldn’t have been lifted if placed on the South bank of the Thames (near the O2) so it was instead built on the North bank (where it could be placed closer to deep water) and then lifted across the river into position by a special boat.  

The three towers are made of steel, which expands and contracts as it gets hot and cold. Because of this and how they are built the towers follow the sun like sunflowers. However, even when they are moving in the sun the overall deviation is less than 40 mm (less than the width of the average adult hand).