London City is the closest commercial airport to the centre of London. Built on a disused dock, it only caters for STOL aircraft on short-haul flights. Its prozimity to both the ExCell exhibition/confrence centre, the City and the new business district around Canary Wharf means it has a high proportion of business travellers.
For those unfamiliar with the DLR, the trains are designed to operate fully automatically under computer control.Each has a "train captain" now called a "passenger service agent" whose primary jobs are to close the doors and check tickets. If the automated control breaks down, there is a control panel they can use to drive it located in front of the first seats. When the system was first nearing completion, the central control computers were not fully on line so filmmakers had to fake the automatic control by having the captains kneel down and hide behind the control panel cover. In some shots you can see the tops of their heads but I suspect these are now deep in the archive. The grand royal opening was also a little spoilt when the doors refused to open and the Queen was stuck in the carriage for some time.
With seats at the front and rear with uninterupted views as you go along the open sections, many of which are elevated, they are an ideal way of seeing the redeveloped business section and also take you to Greenwich for sightseeing opportunities at the Cutty Sark (tea clipper in dry dock) and the National Maritime Museum and Greenwich Observatory sites. Combined with a boat trip back to the Tower or Westminster, it is a really nice and more unusual day out for tourists wanting a break from central London bustle. The existing trains are being refurbished inside and out. The first pictures show the refurbishment.
New rolling stock is also being ordered from Bombardier for delivery from 2007. This is a computer generated image of the proposed design.
For the first time there is a direct rail link to the London City Airport currently from Canary Wharf. The line will eventually cross the river to Woolwich in SE London. A likely second link will be built to directly connect to Stratford to serve the Olympics site.
Jérôme will have no excuse for not using mass transit into the City - especially when the DLR station at Stratford International (Eurostar station opening 2007) is built too :-) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Jérôme, it takes only 2h50' from Waterloo to Gare du Nord, and the return ticket costs only £59. When are we meeting? guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
Yes, but SI is not close a DLR extension right to the railway station is planned for 2010. (This is a typical example of public transport investment idiocy I get mad about: when some new rail line is built without organising traffic connections at the same time. But better late than never!)
Jérôme, it takes only 2h50' from Waterloo to Gare du Nord, and the return ticket costs only £59. When are we meeting?
Actually, some trains (those with less stops) are now scheduled at 2h35m! But Jérôme IIRC once explained that his firm pays him the airplane ticket, and going to City Airport is still faster than the Eurostar even with the new CTRL-1-allowed times. (I saw that comment of his maybe a week late, so only answered it indirectly, now for the second time :-) ) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Examples, using the Eurostar site timetable (due to a silly script, sorry no direct link), at-or-around 2h35m trains are:
London-Paris:
