The expression, “couldn’t run a piss-up in a brewery” springs lightly to mind here…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c625zvn9gzro
My wife had a ferry to Arran from Trion booked today. Cancelled again. My step mum lives out there and finds it extremely hard to plan anything as Calmac cancel the ferries at the drop of a hat.
😁. I was expecting a photo, as it sounded like they opened a new route…… (sorry)
This slow motion car crash has been coming for decades. Since the 90s Consistent under investment a failure to realise just how important ferries are to island life and yes a central belt ) urban bias has led governments to baulk at the scale of investment needed.
Try living on an island where you need ferries for routine stuff like shopping, dentist or hospital - Mrs DB had a dentist appointment on Wednesday morning. Get a message at 9:30pm on Tuesday to say ferries are cancelled due to weather/technical issues. Turns out that another ferry is broken/alongside in Oban and can’t move so all morning services to Mull are cancelled. There are 4 ferries out at the moment due to mechanicals plus 4 at the same time for annual maintenance. This is the first week of the summer season and it’s going to be chaos plus the weather isn’t helping.
Literally Money for Nothing?
Meanwhile the wee catamaran from Orkney trundles on reliably...
It’s not going to get much better either as the aging fleet have reached a stage where they are almost unrepairable.
The fleet are owned by https://www.cmassets.co.uk/about-us/ and it’s the government who are responsible for the lack of replacement ferries.
To be fair the "system" where CMAL owns the ferries and commissions building new ones and pays for some of the maintenance, but CalMac operates the ferries and pays for most of the maintenance seems labyrinthine.
Meanwhile the wee catamaran from Orkney trundles on reliably...
The Alfred is one of the four boats currently undergoing routine maintenance.
Part of the issue remains the Glen Sannox/Glen Rosa fiasco which is still rumbling on and which has meant some vessels have been kept in service longer than planned.
The first of the four Isle of Islay sisters is meant to be in service imminently if not already?
To be fair the "system" where CMAL owns the ferries and commissions building new ones and pays for some of the maintenance, but CalMac operates the ferries and pays for most of the maintenance seems labyrinthine.
The theory behind it is that each entity can concentrate on one aspect.
The railway runs in a similar way where the trains are leased and run by one company but commissioned and owned by another.
Where it falls down is if one of those companies is shite or if central government funding that's needed to buy / maintain / run the train / ferry etc is not forthcoming or there is no defined funding pipeline to plan for new ferries in time before the old ones fall to bits.
The first of the four Isle of Islay sisters is meant to be in service imminently if not already?
Was supposed to start on Friday but now delayed a few days.
This really does seem to be a clusterbourach! Years in the making but now its all happening at once.
To me the structure of Calmac does not help but its multiple decision by many folk over many years thats led to this
Meanwhile the wee catamaran from Orkney trundles on reliably...
The Alfred is one of the four boats currently undergoing routine maintenance.
True, but the point being that in it's time on lease to CMAL it's proven to need a lot less servicing and fewer breakdowns. It has half the crew and half tge fuel burn of a Calmac large ferry. It cost £14.5m and is a relatively standard design with Yanmar engines of plentiful parts and standard design. It's much more like the Norwegian ferry fleet on concept, purchase cost and running costs.
I spoke with the captain on Pentalina on the way to Orkney who said that if Pentland Ferries received the same subsidy as Northlink, Calmac and CMAL he would be paying people to travel with them, not charging.
Alfred being on that route has been the best extended trail that CMAL could have ever undertaken. Yet they are seemingly blind to the benefits and drive on wasting £millions on the Calmac 'traditional' boats. They continue to create ports that are all different from each other, boats that vary in design and more - in doing so create an incompatibility of people, boat and ports.
I know one size of ferry, port and crew doesn't fit all. But the philosophical direction that CMAL takes seems to fly in the face of common sense, proven systems and an utter waste of public funds. And politicians keep supporting them. Time to rip up CMAL as an organisation.
Isle of Islay isn’t yet ready for service - one issue being that can only dock at one of the two berths on Islay. Highlights a further problem is that many of the piers are owned by local councils, not CMAL and many suffer from a lack of upkeep and maintenance. We’re due a new one in Craignure but Argyll & Bute are skint despite the millions in berthing fees they collect.
Unfortunately, a single class of ferry wouldn’t work - there’s a huge difference between a Dunoon ferry for example and those that need to go across the Minch to the Outer Isles. Ferries that are home-ported on the islands rather than the mainland are shown to be more resilient.
We do need a long-term operational and investment plan, but short-term political cycles makes this difficult - austerity in 2010 is the primary cause of the ****-up we have now and then poor political choices. A further issue is the policy and funding decisions are taken by people who don’t live on the islands. Calmac had to pay quite a bit of compensation to island businesses due to last years disruptions and looks like they’re going to be doing it again this year.
This slow motion car crash has been coming for decades. Since the 90s Consistent under investment a failure to realise just how important ferries are to island life and yes a central belt ) urban bias has led governments to baulk at the scale of investment needed.
is it really a lack of investment, or just spending it on the wrong things (untested, gold plated, superferries, awarded to an unproven shipbuilder, for political reasons, and subject to constant revision of specifications running costs up further, rather than buying a greater number of smaller, more versatile, off-the-shelf, proven designs from established suppliers).
Scottish Government have managed to make even MOD procurement begin to look competent.
Its both and a whole load of other things as well IMO. AS ever ( IMO) for something to go spectacularly wrong as they have here is a series of mistakes of a period of time
The SNP has been in power for 19 years.
Doesn't necessarily stop political infighting, amendments in funding from central government, contract change requests, general "act of God" scenarios around bad weather, changing passenger requirements (Covid...) and so on.
Transport (in general) needs to be removed from the political spectrum and be overseen by a cross-party committee of experts, not be subject to the whims of politicians (of all colours) deciding that the desperately needed service given the go-ahead by the previous administration is now going to be cancelled because, well, the previous Transport minister thought of it and I don't want to pick up his/her cast-offs, I want to be different.
It's too long-term to be administered by politicians who only care about the next 4 years, not the next 40.
A ferry put into service today could / should still be going strong in 2050 so it needs some semblance of expertise to look at berthing, maintenance, passenger and vehicle capacity, capital and revenue costs, long term economics, potential future environmental legislation (as in, will it need those big diesel engines ripping out and replacing with batteries at some vast cost in 5 years time...), redundancies and back-up plans...
My opinion is like TJA that it's both. Ferguson didn't have experience of building ferries so it was a risk giving them the contract. but without that the yard would have been shut and it's workforce out of a job.
Long prior to that in the 90s I lived on Mull and the ferry service was often unreliable in winter when the MV Isle of Mull was either away for it's own maintenance ot covering for other vessels elsewhere in the network leaving Mull with smaller older boats which took longer , had less capacity and were more prone to breakdown themselves.
This slow motion car crash has been coming for decades. Since the 90s Consistent under investment a failure to realise just how important ferries are to island life and yes a central belt ) urban bias has led governments to baulk at the scale of investment needed.
is it really a lack of investment, or just spending it on the wrong things (untested, gold plated, superferries, awarded to an unproven shipbuilder, for political reasons, and subject to constant revision of specifications running costs up further, rather than buying a greater number of smaller, more versatile, off-the-shelf, proven designs from established suppliers).
Scottish Government have managed to make even MOD procurement begin to look competent.
Its a double edged sword though isn't it. If they had decided to buy ferries from overseas and use standard designs they'd have been criticised for doing nothing to help Scottish shipbuilding, buying boats which weren't actually designed for the routes they serve and having ignored the environmental impact of their fleet. They tried to do the right thing - to specify the "ideal" boat, make it environmentaly innovative and keep the work in Scotland.
I think its difficult to say the SNP don't recognise the importance of Ferries to Scottish islands - they've introduced RET - that is a massive subsidy for islanders and a boost to the island economies by getting more visitors there.
The biggest problem for the government in this is everyone has a view on how it should be done better - none of them have actually ever run a ferry company (or certainly on this scale) either, dealt with the complications of EU state aid rules, or specified a ferry! There IS a logic to specifying a small number of classes which would be common across the infrastructure so they can be moved around, but that requires major infrastructure projects at each berth too as somewhat bizarrely they are all unique. The MV Alfred which the 20/20 hindsight people say is the solution doesn't actually fit in the Berth at Ardrossan. She hasn't been without her faults either - she was late starting the Calmac charter as she was out of survey, she had a thruster problem which stopped her doing berthing trials in Port Askaig, then a Gearbox problem when she was meant to be doing Berthing trials in Stornoway (she doesn't fit there), she needed ramp modifications to fit in other places.
I'm not for a minute suggesting there have not been stupid decisions, and ministers have probably been involved in some of them but the way Calmac/CMAL/TransportScotland is set up, I would be quite surprised if any other colour of government would currently be sitting with a fleet of great ships servicing the routes that Calmac tries to. If it was that easy, I think someone would have come along with a freight only ferry service and offered it to the Island businesses: its within living memory when everything coming on and off the islands arrived by clyde puffer... nostalgia is great but I think people want the convenience of RoRo these days.
I think its difficult to say the SNP don't recognise the importance of Ferries to Scottish islands - they've introduced RET - that is a massive subsidy for islanders and a boost to the island economies by getting more visitors there.
Except they can barely get the inhabitants there, let alone the tourists!🫠
Its a double edged sword though isn't it. If they had decided to buy ferries from overseas and use standard designs they'd have been criticised for doing nothing to help Scottish shipbuilding, buying boats which weren't actually designed for the routes they serve and having ignored the environmental impact of their fleet. They tried to do the right thing - to specify the "ideal" boat, make it environmentaly innovative and keep the work in Scotland.
But if Scottish shipyards can't do the work or if "innovative" is code for "untested and unreliable" or if 12 different designs unique to each port need to be worked through, you've spent a lot of money "buying local" but delivered nothing.
That said, I still think it goes back to the issue of long term planning.
Decades-long infrastructure projects are not a strength of this country*
*The UK in general, not just Scotland
I'm up for a bit of stravaiging in late April and May. I had considered working some islands into the trip but must admit I'm thinking that might not happen. The speedboat over to Jura looks like a good option right now.
The SNP has been in power for 19 years.And every 4-5 years they have to restart everything to make sure they get in for *another* 4-5 years.
Infrastructure should be separate and protected from political machinations. Funding cycles should be ringfenced and measured in decades. Not 'til the next bunch of politicians decide to stick their oar in.
A ferry put into service today could / should still be going strong in 2050 so it needs some semblance of expertise to look at berthing, maintenance, passenger and vehicle capacity, capital and revenue costs, long term economics, potential future environmental legislation (as in, will it need those big diesel engines ripping out and replacing with batteries at some vast cost in 5 years time...), redundancies and back-up plans...Which is how it seems to be run over here in Sweden (and norway/finland). The government primes the pump, provides the capital and ongoing funding as the ferries are completing the road network. Some services are free, some you need to pay for. But the people *running* them, know what the score is. And (mostly) have the money to keep things going.
If Fergusson's had made a massive profit and the directors were laughing their socks off on a Caribbean island then I'd accept the got nothing for your money argument. But a very large amount of the money spent has gone into the pockets of the workforce in Inverclyde, which is then spent in the shops of Inverclyde etc. I honestly don't know if they made the right decision using that yard for that work, but I am 100% certain that if they hadn't they would be all across the papers for having let down ordinary working class people and if the work went to Vietnam (where the MV Alfred was built) there would be an outcry we were supporting a country with a dodgy human rights record. If they had gone for a more conventional fuel system then other politicians would have claimed they were failing to modernise.Its a double edged sword though isn't it. If they had decided to buy ferries from overseas and use standard designs they'd have been criticised for doing nothing to help Scottish shipbuilding, buying boats which weren't actually designed for the routes they serve and having ignored the environmental impact of their fleet. They tried to do the right thing - to specify the "ideal" boat, make it environmentaly innovative and keep the work in Scotland.
But if Scottish shipyards can't do the work or if "innovative" is code for "untested and unreliable" or if 12 different designs unique to each port need to be worked through, you've spent a lot of money "buying local" but delivered nothing.
That said, I still think it goes back to the issue of long term planning.
Decades-long infrastructure projects are not a strength of this country*
*The UK in general, not just Scotland
But I do agree that long term planning is not a speciality of any government. One of the problems with trying to run services whilst in the public eye is that every mistake is an opportunity for the press and opposition to destroy you and rather than accept that sometimes with hindsight bad decisions will be made and get on with the job, there is so much PR machine involved both in decisions and then in how you deal with the fall out from things that go badly that its impossible to actually get the job done. Fergusson's contract became a decision innertia problem - clearly at some point in the journey it would probably have made sense to stop and do something different but politicians are terrified of U turns.
If it is easy to run a ferry service profitably (and Western and Pentland manage it on their routes so its not absolutely crazy) then why does nobody produce a commercial competitive service to meet the needs of islanders and tourists?
But ask yourself this - on May 7th half a dozen parties are vieing for election, which of them has a clear answer to what they would do now to "sort the ferries" not a story about what they would have done, but a clear set of actions that they will take which will have meaningful differences to reliability within the term of the parliament?
Bring back the puffers.
I was planning a week of cycle touring on the Hebrides this summer, right now its looking unlikely I'll book anything as I just can't afford the time of being stranded. So that is a few hundred ££'s that will not be going to island communities. The cumulative effect of this fiasco must be having a significant impact on rural economies.
Might be worth looking at some of the service performance statistics.
https://corporate.calmac.co.uk/en-gb/about-us/performance-reports/
I think its difficult to say the SNP don't recognise the importance of Ferries to Scottish islands - they've introduced RET - that is a massive subsidy for islanders and a boost to the island economies by getting more visitors there.
Part of the problem is the excessive subsides, certainly for transporting cars. Whilst on holiday in Oban we fancied a trip across to Mull and Tobermory. For 4 of us it was cheaper and much easier to take the car over rather than go as foot passengers and get the bus.
I think its difficult to say the SNP don't recognise the importance of Ferries to Scottish islands - they've introduced RET - that is a massive subsidy for islanders and a boost to the island economies by getting more visitors there.
Part of the problem is the excessive subsides, certainly for transporting cars. Whilst on holiday in Oban we fancied a trip across to Mull and Tobermory. For 4 of us it was cheaper and much easier to take the car over rather than go as foot passengers and get the bus.
? The ferry costs the same for the passengers/driver whether they are on foot or on in the car. This sounds more like a criticism of the cost of the bus. However a quick look says the car costs £18.20 each way (£36.40 return) and the bus from Craignure Return seems to be £17.40 for adults (any Scottish person <22 will be free). So car might be cheaper, at least if you ignore the cost of fuel and the hidden costs of driving (like wear and tear).
The downside of taking the car is you need to prebook or turn up and hope. Unless the ferry is actually cancelled you will almost certainly get on as a foot passenger.
I get the frustration, but it’s likely more complex than simple mismanagement. Ferry operations can be heavily affected by weather, aging vessels, and maintenance issues. That said, it’s the people relying on them who really feel the impact.
I was planning a week of cycle touring on the Hebrides this summer, right now its looking unlikely I'll book anything as I just can't afford the time of being stranded. So that is a few hundred ££'s that will not be going to island communities. The cumulative effect of this fiasco must be having a significant impact on rural economies.
If you are on foot / bike it wouldn't be causing me too much stress at all - you may find issues actually booking bikes on but the reality on the ground is they find somewhere to put your bike. Obviously if the whole ferry is cancelled then it doesnt help, but you can be stranded on the Hebrides any time of year because of the weather, so if its 100% essential you make a particular boat then maybe its not for you. To me thats actually part of the adventure of going to the islands!
When there is prolonged major disruption often there are local arrangements put in place like busses to another ferry, small passenger only vessels etc - who will usually try to accommodate bikes too.
In peak season accommodation is hard to get despite the complications with ferries. Those of us who have been visiting the islands for many years will also notice that (i) the prices have gone up a lot - more than on the mainland; (ii) everywhere is much busier than it was even 10 years ago. An amazing ferry service may actually have a downside too...
Unfortunately, a single class of ferry wouldn’t work - there’s a huge difference between a Dunoon ferry for example and those that need to go across the Minch to the Outer Isles. Ferries that are home-ported on the islands rather than the mainland are shown to be more resilient.
Only been on CalMac ferry a few times - but there’s a huge difference in ferry size and capability.
Sitting underneath a picture of the Minch at my desk at home. Would love to live in the Western Isles - but the midges and reliance on ferries put us off.
Just booked an Arran holiday in September, surprised to find the Ardrossan route on MV Cali Isles had no motorhome spaces left, 6 months ahead! Anyways booked onto the Glen Sannox from Troon. Fingers crossed sailings are running ok.
The Island Crossings series on BBC was a fascinating looking behind the scenes at CalMac.
Cal Mac has always been a heavily subsidised, inefficient operation.
Employment wise, it was a bit of an "old boys" club. Nepotism and sectarianism was rife "back in the day". Not sure if it's still the case?
Cal Mac has always been a heavily subsidised, inefficient operation.
Time to bring in some competition.
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Seriously though, how cool would it be to have a fleet of those in operation?!
(doesn't necessarily require the torpedoes and rocket launchers)
To be fair the "system" where CMAL owns the ferries and commissions building new ones and pays for some of the maintenance, but CalMac operates the ferries and pays for most of the maintenance seems labyrinthine.
Remarkably similar to the railways in Britain. And that runs like clockwork 🤔
(Joking aside it is similar to how much rolling stock is owned / leased, with heavy overhauls sorted by the leasing company, and day to day / month to month maintenance by the operators). But maybe the difference is most train leasing companies still have experienced railway engineers in their midst, some still Ex-BR (though a dieing breed as its 34 years since BR was broken up) . Shows it can work, sort of. Maybe not the most £££ efficient, but still generally works.