So I'm at London Bridge, I love my railways and trains,
of course, but today it's all about the river.
TFL's river bus services are operated by Thames Clippers,
who have 22 piers along the Thames,
from Putney in the west, through the heart of the Capital,
out to Woolwich in the east.
Not all services are scheduled to stop it all piers though.
And some are only served in the peak hours too.
So the least used pier is,
as you might expect, one of those.
But instead of heading out to west London,
as I originally thought I might've done,
when I looked up the figures,
it transpired that due to a very specific reason,
I was going to have to head out east instead.
And so it was that I had to catch the last boat
of the morning from London Bridge City pier
down to Royal Wharf pier.
Thanks guys.
Cheers mate, have a lovely day.
Welcome. (laughs)
It just feels odd to be saying it,
because there's no trains here.
Welcome to London's least used river pier.
TFL call it the river bus services.
It's operated by Thames Clippers, the sponsor
you might see it, is MBNA Thames Clippers.
It's not a stop or a station, it's a pier.
I'm at Royal Wharf and it's London's newest river pier.
I think it opened on October,
I want to say the 18th of last year.
So when I do the stats in a minute,
and we will be doing the stats,
we'll be doing the stats of how many people
got on and off here.
It's only for like two and a half months.
So mid October through to the end of December, 2019.
But let's have a quick look around
London's newest pier first.
All right, so video maker's dream. Dream I tell you,
to get such an amazing long corridor like this.
It's like a tube corridor.
Luke, Mr Agbaimoni, Tube Mapper, if you ever get bored
of taking tube corridor photos, come and take-
What's it called? Is it called a jetty?
That's called a jetty, right, that thing that sticks out?
If you ever get bored of taking pictures of tube corridors
come to Royal Wharf and take a picture
of this thing that sticks out.
I'm just going to get into it straight away
on this sort of nice wooden area, which are steps,
which then blend into seating.
It is step-free, there's a ramp down
where I just got on at London-
and this is blowing in front of the lens.
I love it so much.
Where I just got on at London Bridge City pier
Not so step-free, the ramp is is really quite steep.
Here, brand new pier, they've obviously made it step-free.
There is a ticket machine, although you can obviously
just tap in using Oyster and contactless.
There is a dot matrix.
I'm thinking of displaying the passenger figures
on the dot matrix display in a minute,
but it only gets services in the morning
And in the evening, Monday to Friday,
I think it's open all weekend,
but it's basically like peak hours only.
And they extend the RB1 back from North Greenwich
down to here and then Woolwich as well.
So Oyster, yes, tick. Ticket machine, tick.
Dot matrix, tick. Step-free, tick. Lifebuoy, tick.
Not many tube stations have those.
So I will tell you now that the passenger figures,
it opened on Friday the 18th of October last year,
so it's only been open for 75 days.
The numbers are 16,188 passengers on and off in 2019.
And we can be quite precisive,
because if you bear in mind that Clippers don't run
on Christmas Day and Boxing Day,
then that's divided by 73 is 216 passengers per day.
Now, when I spoke to Thames Clippers,
they said that they think probably really,
the least used Thames pier out of all the piers
is St. George's Wharf down in Vauxhall.
And it's only because this one has only been open
since October that it's only had
two and a half months worth of figures.
So I suspect that really Vauxhall is it.
But like we say, due to the anomaly
of this only being open since October,
this claim for the crown, maybe for 2019 only
as the least used pier.
Some other people have turned up.
I feel like the folks can arrive in a second.
So we'll get a shot at the boat.
And then we're going to see what is in this area.
Thames Clippers, I don't know whether it's a mistake
or if you're just trying to be funny
or whether there's like a character limitation,
but instead of saying Westminster Pier,
it says Westminster Pie. Hmm. Pie.
Hmm, pie.
That is the last Clipper of the morning.
It's really impressive, Like it rocks up at speed.
They slide in, they do the ropes, boom around the side.
Everybody boarded in 30 seconds
and the whole operation is over
and like it's about 45 seconds at the end out,
I've known district line trains take longer
to stop at a platform. (chuckles)
And the Clipper is just like, boom, they're in, they're out.
The information board is amusingly now saying
'bus information is not available'.
I would hope not because no buses stop here.
Oh, the wind, the wind's going to cause me havoc.
I didn't bring my little softy thing.
That's now it. That's the last Clipper of the morning.
There's now no services here until about 16:00, 17:00
this afternoon, this evening.
So I'm wondering, does Like somebody come along
and like lock the gate to here?
Like, is this just empty all day now?
Walking up the jetty ramp. It's so new by the way.
If you look, take a look now before Google come back down,
satellite images from above, this does not appear.
A pier does not appear. They've also done,
you can do like a Google with the little yellow man
drop it in middle of the river. There's a blue line.
It follows the path of a Thames Clipper.
And this pier does not appear because it's so new.
London City Airport is just over there,
we will get planes overhead.
With the lifebuoys it's tantalising how close they are,
how similar they are in shape to a roundel,
the river roundel us just up there.
TFL, Thames Clippers, if you extended this,
if you add like a few inches, either side to the lifebuoy,
it would be in the shape of a roundel.
You could then brand the roundel onto the lifebuoy.
Is that, is that- If that was me- Marketing, come on.
So why is this here? Why has this been built?
Well, as you can see
there's some building works going on behind me.
Housing developments have sprung up here.
There's a couple of shops, near the pontoon dock on the DLR.
And basically this is an area where housing is being built
and the pier has been built to serve the housing area.
From here you can see, it's much better to see now,
how it sort of goes out at one angle,
stops in like a triangle area
where the foreshore is and then goes down
and that's what the ramp is down to the pier.
Yeah, it's basically it's an up and coming area
that's being developed and more will come.
There's Royal Wharf gardens, Corinthian Square
and over there rather obviously,
it's already been in the background of some shots
you've got the Thames barrier, so that's here too.
So just for fun, let's compare it to all the other
least used modes in this series.
And sure enough, a pier that had only been open
for two and a half months when the stats were taken
it's right at the bottom of the lowest figure
out of all the least used stops.
But if you take the 216 a day that it saw in 2019
and multiply that by 365 for a yearly figure,
it would give you a passenger usage number of
78,840 passengers a year,
which would put it into second bottom place,
sliding above the least used tram stop.
That's kind of it.
I'm going to wander down through Thames Barrier Park,
more planes from the airport,
I'll walk to the DLR to pontoon dock to get my train home.
I'll leave you with a shot of the Thames Barrier
and Royal Wharf, London's least used pier.
I suspect next year.
It might be the one at Vauxhall again.
So we'll come back and do it again then.