Waterloo Millennium Pier Belvedere Road, London Surrey England

Waterloo Millennium Pier is a pier on South Bank of the River Thames in Central London, UK, located directly in front of the London Eye.

It is operated by the London Eye and served by various river transport and cruise operators in conjunction with London River Services.

Waterloo Millennium Pier should not be confused with the former Waterloo Police Pier which is on the opposite side of the river on Victoria Embankment next to Waterloo Bridge. This pier has since been renamed the Tower Lifeboat Station and has been the base for the RNLI's Thames lifeboat service since 2006.

Construction

Waterloo Millennium Pier was designed principally to act as a collision protection system for the London Eye. The pier was designed by Marks Barfield architects with Beckett Rankine as engineer and built by Tilbury Douglas (now Interserve). It was funded by the Millennium Commission as part of the Thames 2000 project, and was one of five new piers opened in 2000 by the Commission on the Thames (the others being Blackfriars Millennium Pier, Waterloo Millennium Pier, Westminster Millennium Pier and Millbank Millennium Pier). Its creation was funded by the project was part of an integrated transport and regeneration strategy for the Thames led by London's Cross River Partnership.

Services

The pier is served by various services including:

• the "Tate to Tate" service linking the two Tate Galleries (Thames Clipper)
• commuter boat services between Embankment and Woolwich (Thames Clipper)
• summer leisure cruises between Westminster and Greenwich (City Cruises)

Waterloo is a turnaround point for the commuter boat; upriver services call at Embankment, then Waterloo, where they begin the downriver service back towards Bankside.

Transport links

London Underground

• Waterloo tube station for Jubilee, Northern and Bakerloo lines
• Embankment tube station is a short walk over the Hungerford Bridge
• Westminster tube station is a short walk over Westminster Bridge

National Rail

• London Waterloo station for National Rail
• Charing Cross railway station (also over the Hungerford Bridge)

London River Services

• Festival Pier is a short distance downriver on the same bank
• Westminster Millennium Pier (also over Westminster Bridge)

London Buses

Buses stopping on Westminster Bridge are the nearest services.

Local attractions

• London Eye
• London Aquarium
• Dali Universe
• Florence Nightingale Museum
• Big Ben
• South Bank arts precinct

Source: www.en.wikipedia.org