Car ferry B617/1-2

Construction of two car passenger ferries for a British Owner – Transport for London. The new vessels will be operating the Thames crossing in the district of Woolwich carrying over a million vehicles and 2.6 million passengers a year. They will be built according to “LMG 60-DEH” design prepared by LMG Marin and will comply with rules and regulations of Lloyds Register of Shipping and the Maritime & Coastguard Agency. Briggs Marine Contractors, who operate the Woolwich Ferry service under a long term contract with TfL, will be providing the Owner’s Plan Approval and Build supervision for TfL supported by Keel Marine. The new ferries have been specifically designed to match the refurbished linkspans at Woolwich and will replace the current three vessels built in 1963. The new ferries will be equipped with 210 lane meters of vehicle deck space with dedicated cyclist accommodation separated from foot passengers. The vessels will be licensed to carry 150 passengers. The vessels’ propulsion system has been designed around the principals of maximum efficiency, inbuilt redundancy, high reliability and low operating costs. Therefore, each vessel will be equipped with four azimuth thrusters powered by vertically mounted permanent magnet motors. Two Diesel generating sets are installed and in normal operation only one will be running at a near constant load with the battery installation providing the peak power demand for the crossings. When the propulsion power demand is low the excess generated power will be used to recharge the batteries. This novel hybrid system provides numerous advantages and in particular