Tower Millennium Pier

Tower Millennium Pier

Tower Millennium Pier, with the City of London's financial core behind, as seen from City Hall
Type	River bus and tourist/leisure services
Locale	River Thames, London, UK
Owner	London River Services
Operator	London River Services

Tower Millennium Pier is a pier on the River Thames, in London, UK. It is operated by London River Services and served by various river transport and cruise operators. The pier is close to Tower Bridge and is situated immediately adjacent to the Tower of London, next to the Traitors' Gate.

The pier is used by the river bus route RB1 from Embankment to Woolwich (operated by MBNA Thames Clippers) and Westminster-Greenwich tourist boats (operated by City Cruises). Private-charter entertainment boats also use Tower Pier.

Tower Millennium Pier was opened on 14 July by London Mayor Ken Livingstone. Its creation was funded by the Millennium Commission as part of the Thames 2000 project, and was one of five new piers provided by the Commission on the Thames (the others being Blackfriars Millennium Pier, London Eye Pier, Westminster Millennium Pier and Millbank Millennium Pier). The pier has at its upstream end a small cruise terminal facility which is used for processing passengers and baggage transferred by boat from cruise ships berthed alongside HMS Belfast. The Tower Pier project was part of an integrated transport and regeneration strategy for the Thames led by London's Cross River Partnership.

In 2002 the RNLI's Thames lifeboat service was introduced to the River Thames following the Marchioness disaster, and Tower Pier was initially used as a base for the lifeboat service. In 2006 the RNLI station moved up-river to a new base, the former Waterloo Police Pier on Victoria Embankment next to Waterloo Bridge, which took the name Tower Lifeboat Station.