The ferry is now operated by Serco on contract from TfL, IIRC for about
£7m a year.

There are undoubtedly longterm plans to replace both the boats and the
linkspans, in which the machinery regularly shows that it is
life-expired.

Since the linkspans were built as one-offs [or should that be
four-offs, to be strictly accurate?] in the early 60s, replacement
components are difficult to find, to say the least.

When they are replaced, the work is likely to be much easier than it
was 40 years ago for a number of reasons:

- improvements in linkspan design, construction and reliability, with
companies such as Sweden's TTS at the fore
- advances in civil engineering techniques
- huge increase in knowledge of the river, the river bed and the ground
below acquired through the building of the Thames Barrier and more
recently the DLR extension to WA

But I'm not sure of the timescale. Is there any more info?





On 2009-04-05 21:44:38 +0100, said:

The current boats are now over 45 years old, and must be coming
towards the end of their life. What is going to happen to the derry,
will new boats be built, will it be replaced by a new bridge or
tunnel, or will it simply be closed?

Also, when riding on the 180 bus, between Lewisham and Abbey Wood,
I've noticed two enclosed areas of water just to the west of the
ferry, close to where the spare boat is kept when a single boat
service is operating. Only the Easternmost of these can easily be
seen from the bus, as the other is largely hidden by a building, but
they can both be seen on Google Earth, and there is some sort of
building between them. The water in them seems to be separated from
the river by a concrete wall now, but they look rather like small dry
docks. were they used to maintain the old ferries possibly; they look
about the right size, and if so why were they walled off from the
river? Or were they something completely different?


--
Writer / editor on London's River