Thelife- London's $96 million cable car system has a new look and name change.
- The cable car struggled to attract commuters but has proved a hit on TikTok.
London's cable car has been given a refresh that its owners hope could boost its popularity, following its newly earned status as a viral tourist attraction in recent years.
For 10 years, the half-mile-long, 300-foot-high monocable was known as the Emirates Air Line, but in a ceremony at London's City Hall last Thursday, the local transit agency Transport for London (TfL), which owns the cable car, officially revealed its new rebrand as the IFS Cloud Cable Car.
The Dangleway, as it's nicknamed, has struggled to attract regular riders since it was constructed at a cost of £60 million, or about $96 million at the time, in 2012 ahead of the London Olympics.
While the cable car has struggled to attract commuters it has proved to be a popular hit on social media during that time. Videos related to Cable Cars London have received a collective 25.4 million views on TikTok according to the platform, while the hashtag #cablecarslondon has received 3.2 million; #londoncablecar has the same number; #emiratescablecars has received 10.3 million.
The rebrand advances a sponsorship deal with the IT firm IFS, first announced in September, and marks an end to a protracted saga to find a new name.
A £36 million sponsorship deal with the airline Emirates ended in June, leaving Transport for London without a long-term sponsor for the system. TfL began the search for a new sponsor in December and had a deadline of February for prospective sponsors to submit their interest.
When the deadline passed in February it had yet to receive any formal submissions, leading some to question the long-term future of the project.
TfL has always maintained that the system would have remained running even if sponsorship was not found, per the Evening Standard. The new deal, however, is valued at much less than the previous sponsorship.
IFS will pay about £420,000 a year, or $490,000 at the current exchange rate, per the Evening Standard, significantly less than the £3.6 million annually paid by Emirates. IFS' deal will run for a minimum of two years, TFL said when the deal was first announced in September. Officials at the Thursday event told Insider it was a five-year deal, with a two-year break clause.
The cable car crosses the River Thames between the Greenwich Peninsula and the Royal Victoria Dock east of central London. When it first opened, officials predicted that as many as 2 million people a year could use the system. Boris Johnson, then London's mayor, promised the cable car would play an important part in innovating travel in the city, by enabling people to cross the Thames in just five minutes, rather than having to take a lengthy tube ride.
But The Guardian reported in February that freedom-of-information requests revealed that at one point the system had just four regular commuters. According to TfL's figures, about 15 million people have used the cable car in the decade since it opened.
"All the social media and positive vibes about this service are that we have all the right plans in place to make it even more successful in the future," Danny Price, TfL's head of sponsorship, told the BBC in April in an interview about how TfL was attempting to leverage that fame in its search for a new sponsor.
Oliver Pilgerstorfer, IFS' chief marketing officer, said at Thursday's event that the company's sponsorship "makes a lot of sense."
The software firm specializes in providing services to organizations that build or maintain large assets, including Doppelmayr, the Austrian cable-car manufacturer that built and maintains the cable car on behalf of TfL.
Following the new deal, the system's 36 cabins have been redesigned with IFS' purple colors — a shade that's coincidentally similar to that of London's newish $25 billion Tube route, the Elizabeth Line.
Over the coming months, the interiors will be refurbished and fitted with new communications systems, Josh Crompton, TfL's head of IFS Cloud Cable Car, told Insider. "It's a visitor attraction now more than a way to cross the river," Crompton said.