Forum menu
The cost of roads is a lot more than the mere maintenance cost
Exactly. The cost of excess motoring in the UK goes way beyond maintenance and even beyond construction and engineering costs and the cost of car storage in our cities and towns. There is a social, health and environmental cost. There are landscape, heritage, and wellbeing costs and the huge cost of lost opportunities. Many of these costs are cumulative and this amplifies the cost of undoing our motornormativity and of putting it all right in the future.
Supposedly the Glen Sannox is finally going to be handed over to CalMac today
I hope that's true, but it's not hit the news yet here on Arran.
Supposedly the Glen Sannox is finally going to be handed over to CalMac today
Do they all go for a wee cruise up the Clyde in the new whip?
A wee cruise to Birkenhead for dry docking according to where I read this, because of course.
and not increase traffic in general – the jams on the M8 and into Edinburgh are bad enough without generating more traffic. Building more roads in general does not reduce congestion – it increases it in other areas as total traffic increases
I am aware of the rationale. I’m sceptical that it was logical in this case, but even if it was speccing if so if was under capacity at completion rather at capacity at completion was just naive - it’s not like there is some wonderful magic alternative: I doubt most of that traffic is going town centre to city centre. Presumably those that do, typically don’t use the M8, as it would be quite a bit of extra journey.
have you tried any of the these journeys on public transport:
One of the urban sprawl housing estates in Dunfermline to Leith / Rosyth to Roslin / Dalkeith to Glenrothes / Livingston to Methil / Dalgety Bay to Little France and be certain of arriving there for say 8am or not leaving until after 7pm.
the same is true for the M8 toll suggestion - it’s easy to get from the centre of Bathgate to the centre of Glasgow but have you tried getting from an East Kilbride housing estate to a Bathgate Industrial Estate? Or from Airdrie to Newbridge? Or Port Glasgow to Blackburn? Have you been in any of those towns when there is problem in the m8? They will all get more traffic if tou pay to use what is essentially the “town bypass”.
pricing people out their cars only works if the alternatives are actually realistic. The train service (at least pre Covid) was dreadful, massively overcrowded, unreliable, poorly connected to other services and often expensive despite the subsidies. Congesting them out of their cars probably does work better (I “never” drive into Edinburgh and rarely in Glasgow because of that) but the FRB isn’t a city centre - it’s an arterial route.
pricing people out their cars only works if the alternatives are actually realistic
Several considerations - first, there is the long running Treasury view that public transport is a luxury rather than an essential public utility and driver of growth (which of course has also led to such blunders as bus deregulation); second, there is screaming (and sometimes death threats) from a minority of drivers whenever there is any suggestion of restricting driving, or removing parking to put in bike lanes/bus lanes/whatever which then causes councillors to bottle it, and thirdly, in the nicest possible way, no matter how good the alternatives are, carrot with no stick does not work, and driving has to be made less convenient before people will use them.
Ultimately, we lack an integrated transport strategy and the current situation is not good for individuals, for air quality, for the planet, or for the economy (as car dependence excludes those who can’t or can’t afford to drive, making it harder for them to eg. get better jobs or any job, time spent stuck in a traffic jam isn’t economically productive, and the oil and car companies are largely based overseas so money spent on this goes out of the economy).
But this is all off topic.
Poly - lots of those journeys are actually pretty simple with a short walk or cycle ride included, I do similar regularly
just for fun I looked up a couple
Dunfermline to leith. 2 stations in dunfermline plus rosyth so nowhere is more than 20 odd mins walk from a station. 2 trains an hour. 30 mins to haymarket. change platforms, tram to leith - every 7 mins. longest its going to take in total is 1.15 hours. You wouldn't be able to drive it in that time in peak times.
Rosyth to roslin
train to waverly, bus to roslin. total journey time under 2 hours. slower than driving in peak times but perfectly possible and not that much slower as at peak times the roads towards edinburgh and the bypass are very congested
pricing people out their cars only works if the alternatives are actually realistic. The train service (at least pre Covid) was dreadful, massively overcrowded, unreliable, poorly connected to other services and often expensive despite the subsidies. Congesting them out of their cars probably does work better (I “never” drive into Edinburgh and rarely in Glasgow because of that) but the FRB isn’t a city centre – it’s an arterial route.
You can of course move house or job to something easier as a journey.
Very easy for me to say that, but decisions have to be made. Until recently it was completely normal to want to live in one place with greenery and good school, but drive to the city centre where all the big employers were. Post pandemic, working from home, people choosing different office locations etc, I can see a slight shift in that assumption. Maybe we will see businesses and people move to places on rail and bus routes, or close enough to walk or cycle. Maybe businesses will realise that the city centre location has it's downsides etc.
thread is a microcosm of Scottish transport policy .......
....discussion of rural lifeline links gets hijacked by metropolitan central belt naval gazing....
🙂
Fair point!
thread is a microcosm of Scottish transport policy …….
….discussion of rural lifeline links gets hijacked by metropolitan central belt naval gazing….
Guilty as charged!
to come back to the ferries then. to me it seems like multiple issues:
Under investment for a long time
Botched procurement of the latest ferries
The service trying to please too many folk leading to pleasing none
I do not know if this is done but one thing I would like to see in the future is differential pricing for locals freight and tourists. ~Raise significant money without penalising locals
any talk of a tourist tax on the islands....
As someone who visits the Hebrides once every couple of years I wouldn't object to an extra £5 or £10 per night on accommodation to go to community stuff like transport etc
Quite a few places talking about it in UK now....
They have differential pricing in eg. the Canaries, and it’s always been a bit of a mystery why eg. Edinburgh doesn’t have a tourist tax.
I suspect if Glen Sannox/Glen Rosa had been anything like on time, there would have been at least two more ferries built in Port Glasgow so they’d not be in the mess they’re in now with a number of vessels coming to the end of life.
there was an attempt to put a tourist6 tax in Edinburgh that failed and never happened for reasons I forget. Now there is Scottish Govenment legislation to back it and another attempt is being made
I suspect if Glen Sannox/Glen Rosa had been anything like on time, there would have been at least two more ferries built in Port Glasgow so they’d not be in the mess they’re in now with a number of vessels coming to the end of life.
Agreed. The budget would have gone further, buying two more ferries on top of the Turkish built ones..
Argyll & Bute Council are currently consulting on a visitor levy, which many are now calling a “host tax”. The simplest solution would be to put a levy on the ferry ticket, but for whatever reason can’t be done. There are 3,500 residents on the island, but our council tax gets consumed paying for facilities and cleaning up the waste of the 600,000 visitors per year. Likewise, to pay for a new pier as the old one is knackered.
Most islanders don’t resent the visitors as most bring valuable revenue, but we are getting increasing numbers of campervans and motorhomes who ‘wild’ camp, shit in the bushes and leave their mess behind - this new levy however doesn’t apply to them.
There was this scheme https://www.highland.gov.uk/info/20027/highland_campervan_and_motorhome_scheme
It would be polite to say it wasn't a runway success.
That would be the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act 2024. Came into force in July, IIRC it is down to local authorities to choose to use the powers and implement the levy.
I do not know if this is done but one thing I would like to see in the future is differential pricing for locals freight and tourists. ~Raise significant money without penalising locals
it’s not done, I’m not sure it’s actually a great idea - it feel like a them and us situation. But I see no reason why regular travellers can’t get a season ticket / discount on “bulk” travel.
however if it was up to me foot passengers would go free and vehicle fares would increase! I’d like to see free public travel for everyone in Scotland.
calmac ferries are cheap as chips for foot passengers anyway
You can of course move house or job to something easier as a journey.
Seriously - I ended up with a 180km round trip commute because after over 10 years of trying I finally got a job that was not just for a few weeks. Getting work can be very, very difficult. Fortunately although expensive, there was a good train service for that journey.
it’s not done, I’m not sure it’s actually a great idea – it feel like a them and us situation.
Yes, but there is a difference between residents (for whom the ferry is a lifeline) and tourists (who are not going to notice a small surcharge on the ferry) and as above Navieras Armas have a discounted rate for Canarians IIRC.
there was an attempt to put a tourist tax in Edinburgh that failed and never happened for reasons I forget
Wasn't it people wailing about how a tourist tax would deter people from attending the internationally renowned arts festival in a city that's very much on the American 'Europe' trail?
we are getting increasing numbers of campervans and motorhomes who ‘wild’ camp, shit in the bushes and leave their mess behind – this new levy however doesn’t apply to them.
It really is quite strange that there is no additional fare supplement specifically for campervans, motor homes & caravans to fund the ferry network given how stressed it is. Speaking as someone who has been going to the western isles for nearly 30 years in their campervan and who would happily pay. Pre-subsidy 20 odd years ago the fares were quite expensive, silly cheap now.
calmac ferries are cheap as chips for foot passengers anyway
And since RET cars too. Hence why the Cumbrae ferry queue jams Largs every time there's a sunny day. (that there is a bus service on the island that will take people into Millport seems lost on the folk who would rather spend several hours queuing on either side)
The problem with the tourist tax is that most of the revenue has to be spent on tourist-facing services and infrastructure instead of just going into general revenue. It's a giant boondoggle for the tourism-industrial complex and consultants, and wouldn't do anything to eg replace housing stock lost to Airnbnb by building new social housing.
have you tried any of the these journeys on public transport:
No-one said one solution was going to be right for everyone. Sounds like these edge cases would appreciate a quicker journey with less congestion for a reasonable fee. Also sounds like the bus service would be more reliable if there weren't so many fing low occupancy cars in the way
I see Hebridean Isles is heading to be scrapped today - down to Glasgow and then who knows...
I first went on that boat in 1988(ish) and first ever Hebridean trip with family as a teenager, and was back on it again with my dad last year.
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-7.1/centery:57.4/zoom:7
....down to Glasgow to get stripped of usable parts then onwards for recycling. It's done well!
Several weeks of crew familiarisation
i realise it’s probably a contractual mess made more complex by the fact calmac don’t own the boat but… could none of that have been done whilst on the acceptance trials?
Probably not as it didn't have a seaworthiness certificate so imagine there are all sorts of rules around that. Plus as you say Calmac don't own it.
Now handed over to CMAL, apparently.
Great to see the new tub ploughing across the water...
...but I now see that the issues with Ardrossan harbour have been raised again.
Peel ports are a profit making company, so what do they gain by delaying redevelopment?
Anyone know why there's such an issue and delay between Scottish Government, Peel Ports and CMAL?
Anyone else watching the (rather endearing) series on Calmac at present?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001p4kw
I think the argument is who pays. Peel Ports will benefit from fees from Calmac going ahead. How much should the taxpayer pay for upgrading a privately owned asset
£400 million for 2 inter island ferry's is crazy.
makes the £7 billion for the 2 Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier's look like good value.
This may have been missed by some; MV Isle of Mull now borked - failed annual inspection of the emergency slide and passengers numbers restricted to 45 (normally 900). Currently being used on the Oban - Lochboisdale route where average Pax numbers in winter are low. No spares or replacement for slide as it’s so old - ship due to be retired next year anyway.
matt_outandabout
Free MemberPeel ports are a profit making company, so what do they gain by delaying redevelopment?
They don't actually make very much from small ports- the figure being quoted most is £15m from the Calmac mooring fees over the last 10 years, though that disregards other earnings of course. So inevitably they're always angling for more public money (but staying just on the right side of abandoning entirely) They're quite happy to let low-earning services just dangle, as seen with the Irish terminal at Ardrossan which they happily ran into the ground then abandoned, and they have plans to leverage the harbour rights of the clyde in other ways to make money more easily.
The other side of it is property development... Peel does both and has done very well out of aquiring ports and redeveloping them. In the medium-long term it might just make more sense for them to close the ferry port, I read (but can't confirm, there's a lot of bullshit being thrown around) that they've make more from the industrial estate parts of the port than from the harbour functions. Ardrossan already has big plans for redevelopment on the shore
makes the £7 billion for the 2 Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier’s look like good value.
I wonder if the ferries will need the deck repainted after the boat sitting in the baking heat of, err, Invergordon for a couple days.
MV Isle of Mull now borked
Keep the Alfred on hire and you get shiny new Glen Rosa when it comes into service?
Anyone know why there’s such an issue and delay between Scottish Government, Peel Ports and CMAL?
I think for starters it's a 4-way discussion rather than a 3-way one because North Ayrshire Council are involved too. It was green lit in 2018 but then seemingly nothing happened and the government 'paused' the project in 2023 because cost were increasing. I'm not sure how you pause something that hasn't started, but now all parties are back around the table trying to work out a new business model.
Something thats going to impact on that new buisiness model, presumably, is the new ships are 90 tons heavier than specified and therefore will have to carry less freight than intended.
The contract to build the refuelling facities was awarded in 2020 too, so that also is way behind schedule. But only for the reason that its unable to start because it's still not clear what port to actually build it in.
Ministers are still months away from making any announcement as to what the plan is going to be
Keep the Alfred on hire and you get shiny new Glen Rosa when it comes into service?
Unfortunately not, Alfred can’t dock safely at Craignure (they tried) and whilst they’re looking to build a new pier (Argyll & Bute Council) it’s going to take a few years. Looks like we’ve got another few years of reduced/impaired ferry service at least. The worst impacts are in winter where fewer crossings combined with poorer weather means you often can’t travel as planned - day trips to Glasgow for hospital appointments can be tricky.