The core of this situation is that Scotland – and Argyll – has inhabited islands of all sizes which. with some remote mainland areas, are largely reached only by sea.
The cultural and economic role of Scotland’s islands
These areas host traditional communities that are part of Scotland’s culture and its ethnic diversity.
- Many of the west coast islands – like the Westerm Isles, are strongholds of the Gaelic language.
- Many are the source of Scotland’s best traditional and folk musicians – one of the top three reasons for visitors coming to the Highlands, according to the report on Highland Year of Culture 2007.
- Some, like Tiree, host internationally renowned events like the Tiree Wave Classic wavesailing championship.
- Others, like Islay, host some of best known and most characterful single malt whisky distilleries.
- Then there is Mull, with its holy Isle of Iona.
- And there is Skye with its fabulous mountains, including the Inaccessible Pinnacle in the Black Cuillins. Skye of course now also has its bridge, liberated from the cutthroat grasp of a Private Public Partnership (PPP) by Robbie the Pict.
Because these communities continue to exist, the services that support their ability to do so – ferries, roads, power supplies, communications, healthcare, leisure facilities, education, retail outlets… also serve a tourist industry keen to experience their uniqueness. This industry itself contributes economically to the survival of such communities.
The lifeline services
The ferries that carry residents and visitors, vehicles, supplies, materials and equipment, sometimes livestock, day in month out through all seasons and almost all weather conditions are, for good reason, called ‘lifeline’ services.
The Government of the country has a responsibility to these communities as much as any other. If the ‘lifeline’ ferry services were provided by the profit-driven private sector, few if any would exist beyond experiment at best. Any that did could not reliably deliver a constant service while still making a profit.
Withdrawal from a route would be the prerogative of any private company, the decision made for legitimate business reasons alone. This would see remote communities left without the means not only of transport but survival itself.
Such services cannot be left to delivery by the private sector and no Scottish Government could countenanceleaving island and remote communities a prey to such vulnerability.
For this reason, the west coast lifeline services are provided through a wholly state-owned operation and bundled together in a single delivery contract so that the more popular routes support those to the less populous and more remote islands.
Caledonian MacBrayne, the private/public hybrid
Hence, by a tortuous chain of legal moves, the Hebridean and Clyde ferry operator, Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac), has moved from its origins as a private company, to being a nationalised service, to its current 2 year-old complexity as a private company whose only shareholders are Scottish Government Ministers. It is a wholly state-owned company, run as a private sector operation and in receipt of government subsidies for year-round west-coast services which cannot make a profit.
Its more recent legal contortions have been necessary to protect the routes from a form of European intervention, under-informed on the exigencies of island life. This might – but is thought no longer likely to – have seen the routes ‘unbundled’ and opened to commercial tender either as single routes or in small clusters.
In turn this would inevitably have provoked cherry-picking by private sector operators of any routes capable of showing a profit with a ‘bucket seats’ operation. Even these would have been unlikely to have lasted for long.
Lifeline services and competition
The lifeline ferry services do not make a profit – although some say they could do so.
Much is made of the profitability of the short ferry crossing between Hunter’s Quay, north of Dunoon in Cowal and McInroy’s Point, south of Gourock, run by Western Ferries.
This route uses low-profile, forty year-old, double-ended boats which are not licensed to serve beyond the Clough Light on the Clyde waterway.
These boats have no need to provide any ancillary services on the short crossing.
The company offers no or, at best, static and out of date online information when services are withdrawn due to weather conditions. We have to use an online Ship AIS service literally to ‘see’ if the Western Ferries boats are running and to see when they come back onstream after service disruptions.
There is a telephone number that tends to go unanswered in such circumstances.
Good public information on service status, available readily online, is a feature of the state-owned CalMac provision and is possible where the focus on service is in a position to supercede the imperative of profit.
All of that said, Hunter’s Quay – McInroy’s Point is a useful, usable, frequent and affordable service particularly for traffic coming north and headed for Cowal, Argyll and the highlands and, in reverse, for traffic from those areas heading southwards.
Western Ferries also has the inestimable advantage of permission to run as frequent a service as it likes on this route where the CalMac service, running between Gourock and Dunoon, is restricted by the Government from running more than one service every hour.
There is local concern in Dunoon over the situation that might arise in journey costs and frequencies should the state-owned operator retire from the route, leaving it to a sole service provider from the private sector.
Western Ferries and the Arran competition kite
Gordon Ross, Managing Director of Western Ferries, told The Herald this week that the company intends to go head-to-head with CalMac on the route from Ardrossan on the Ayrshire coast to Brodick on the Isle of Arran, an island with a population of just over 5,000.
CalMac runs this service with the MV Caledonian Isles, carrying 100 cars and 1,000 passengers, providing 5 sailings a day in each direction with a journey time of 55 minutes.
Mr Ross had discussions with Arran businesses and other islanders this Autumn, heard them say they would welcome a more extensive service than the five daily, 55-minute long crossings each way provided by CalMac and is said at that time to have talked of bringing a supplementary service onstream by summer 2010.
In his interview with The Herald, Mr Ross now says that his company is designing a ship for the route with a planned start to the service in 2012. However, he goes on to say: ‘We are taking positive steps in designing a new vessel to better determine the operational costs of providing a commercial service to Arran. We are absolutely committed to the idea’. This sounds a lot more tentative.
The competitor’s analysis of CalMac’s subsidy restrictions
Gordon Ross, still smarting over 20 years after a competing service to the Isle of Islay run by his family was undercut by the nationalised CalMac, for whom he had formerly worked, offering substantial discounts to hauliers.
He feels that the forthcoming European Commission report into the Scottish ferry industry will prevent CalMac from using its subsidy in anti-competitive action of this kind – by taking a greater loss in undercutting competitors’ charges or by seeking a further subsidy to increase its sailing frequencies.
Will the Western Ferries Arran service ever happen?
It has to be extremely unlikely. Why?
Reading Mr Ross’s interview in The Herald one is struck by he absence of hard facts as opposed to sabre rattling. And there are a significant number of unthought factors which would have to be confronted were such a service to be an imminent reality.
- The cost of a ferry for the Arran route
The new ferry destined for the Isle of Islay has a build cost of around £25 million. A lesser ship would not be adequate for the sea route involved in the crossing from Ardrossan to Brodick.
That is a huge investment to raise and to risk in an operation with a market that is much more uncertain than Mr Ross may hope.
Western Ferries says that it has backers, but in this financial climate they would need to be buccaneering venture capitalists to ignore the factors we list below.
- Arran’s hunger for an extended ferry service
Mr Ross seems to have no hard facts to support his contention that Arran would respond to a more frequent service running over a much longer working day.
If you ask anyone if they would like more of anything, they will, of course say yes. That does not mean that they will use it in sufficient volume to make it profitable, perhaps even to wash its face.
The evidence for this exists in CalMac’s own trading history. The company was persuaded, by insistent island representation, to put on additional services to the Isle of Mull – services since notable for their marked under-use.
- The myth of a commuter passenger market
A survey carried out by a ferry group on the Isle of Bute showed, contrary to expectations, that commuter traffic on the Rothesay-mainland ferries runs at around 4%.
This is not alone a significant market adequate to support extended ferry services on a 35 minute journey to an island closer inshore than Arran with its 55 minute journey time.
It is highly unlikely that the demand for a commuter ferry service from Arran would add up to 4% of the current travelling market on the Ardrossan-Brodick route.
- The Road Equivalent Tariff (RET) pilot
The major matter which seems to have escaped Mr Ross’s attention is that the Scottish Government is well into the running of a very relevant thirty-month pilot scheme. This is testing the impact on island life and economic development of ferry subsidies reducing fares to the cost of a road journey of equivalent distance – the RET (Road Equivalent Tariff) scheme.
The logic is that if this scheme returns evidence of a strongly positive impact, it will have to be extended to the rest of Scotland’s islands which are outside those included in the pilot trial.
Is a private service such as that suggested by Western Ferries, operated with a new or chartered ship, likely to be competitive in these circumstances? Would the Scottish Government be prepared to accept offering less than a universal RET scheme when its interest in it is born of a will to support the lifestyle and economic growth of all of its remote island communities? Would Arran accept being left out?
Criticisms of CalMac
No large organisation is free of criticism for good reason. But CalMac does come in for much ill-considered criticism.
- ‘Where’s the replacement ship?’
When a ferry develops a problem and has to be taken out of service, there are immediate cries of ‘shame on CalMac’ for not having an immediate replacement ship.
No company today can afford to have a spare ship lying around, ready to fill unexpected gaps in any service. The impact on costs – or on subsidy – would be unjustifiable. Moreover, CalMac has many sizes and varieties of ship in service, operating out of many different piers and harbours and serving a range of sizes of population. The company could not possibly carry a fleet of spare types of ship.
In fact, CalMac has a good record in swift rescheduling in such circumstances, shuffling its ships around its routes to keep all of them running even if some are on a reduced schedule for the time being. Realistically, what is the financially responsible alternative to this?
- ‘You’re overcrewed and you offer shipboard catering, when vending machines would do.’
CalMac has to operate crewing levels according to the muster lists required by the Passenger Certificates issued for each ship. This is the number of crew required to take charge of muster stations and evacuate a ship safely in the case of an emergency. The MV Caledonian Isles, for example, is has to be crewed to muster and manage 1,000 passengers.
The muster list imperative does produce a greater number of crew on board than are needed for the normal operation of the ship. The company’s answer to this situation is to use the surplus crew to work in the galley, providing freshly made meals for sale to passengers.
While some argue that vending machines are an adequate refreshment provision for all but the longest of the west coast ferry journeys, CalMac’s cafeterias, even on journeys of around 30 minutes – as from our own first hand evidence on the Gourock to Dunoon route – are well used.
This would seem to be an imaginative and customer-service oriented answer to compulsory excess crewing levels dictated by public safety requirements.
The imposed crewing levels do, in wages, lead to higher journey costs. This is a focus for easy criticism. Imagine how quickly such criticism would change direction in the aftermath of any fatality-producing emergency in circumstances where the ship concerned was undercrewed.
Should there be competition to a state-owned lifeline service?
This is not the same things as giving a state-owned service carte blanche to sponge off the public purse. Any public service – nationalised, contracted out or hybridised like CalMac’s lifeline ferry services – needs the best management practice and an ever-watchful scrutiny with appropriate regulation to shelter that most unprotected and disregarded funder of all – us.
For that very reason – and assuming that the most effective scrutiny of all providers of public services is at least a state aspiration, private sector competition against state-owned services cannot be other than damaging to the public purse.
In the case of Scotland’s west coast lifeline ferry services, no private sector service is remotely likely to be able to offer the frequencies, the reliability, the safety and the year-round services supplied by CalMac as a wholly-state-owned operation.
Any cherry-picking single route competition can do no more than cream off some of the revenue generation that helps to reduce the public subsidy to the core lifeline services.
In the case of CalMac, revenue generated above a set level is returned to the Government and the Scottish budget.
And, in the unlikely event of a private operator taking very serious volumes of business from the state-owned outfit, CalMac can simply abandon the route, deploy the ship concerned advantageously in increasing services on other routes or indeed open another route.
The answer for Western Ferries?
An entrepreneurial spirit would tender for the Irish Sea route to Argyll, between Campbeltown and Ballycastle, possibly offering a potentially profitable and economically developmental triangular route including Troon in Ayrshire.
This is not a lifeline service – although it could be an economic lifeline service. There is therefore no state-owned provision for it so the successful operator would have a clear run to develop a profitable and attractive service.
It would be good for Argyll to see an energetic private ferry operator like Western Ferries take the commercial bit between its teeth and make a roaring success of this beautiful route.
The photographs above – of CalMac’s MV Juno arriving at Gourock from Dunoon, is by copyright holder Dave Souza and is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.
There are many observations that I could, and may in future, make on this item but my first observation is that you cannot suggest that we can get a good plate of Macaroni Cheese from a vending machine!
My second is that although Robbie the Pict sustained a very high profile in the Skye Bridge campaign the securing of a toll free bridge was down to a number of highly motivated people on Skye who would not take NO for an answer
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You’re absolutely right, of course. The key driver in the win on the mess that was the Skye Bridge toll was the enduring will of the Skye folk. But the spirit of Robbie the Pict somehow summed up the whole movement – and who will ever forget the persistence that discovered that the key legal documents had never actually been signed.
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This ,of course,is an interesting and potentially very useful development from Western Ferries and to be applauded.
Competition on the provision of services brings efficiency and is always to the benefit of the paying customer and the public in general.
Strange how Western Ferries have spent the last few decades actively trying to remove CalMac from the Dunoon/Gourock route and achieve a monopoly for themselves which would have been very much against the public interest.
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Western Ferries – claim that CalMac forced them off the Islay route – yet (they) were the one’s who turned their back on the Islay/Jura run when their ‘landing craft’ developed engine trouble more recently, yet ‘no’ CalMac to blame for that one! AND I have yet to see a CalMac employee (drinking) on the job! Or get their leg crushed as vehicles had to reverse onto their single ramped ‘landing craft’ either!
Oh and if Mr Ross, formerly of CalMac who – jumped ship to Western Ferries as their “token” is reading this, did their ‘landing craft’ they took of the Islay/jura not capsize twice and nearly sink on the Islay/jura run where the cabled ramp fell down into the water nearly sinking the craft?
Robbie the Pict, ok, my understanding of it, is that the Skye Bridge was going to cost the Government twice the original cost under their “private finance” – what better way to deflect the inept funding of the bridge than to scrap the tolls!
A few years ago I seen a young Skye couple on TV living in a damp 1950′s caravan as they could NOT get a house in ‘their community’ as the demand for holiday houses (from all over the world) was stopping them enjoying their lives, think how many houses the £50.000.000 bridge could have built! Given the choice, would our ‘declining young’ prefer a house or a bridge?
Same thing on Islay – ferries cramed full of people visiting hundreds of holiday houses – in my opinion it is state sponsored ETHNIC CLEANSING! AND unless I am mistaken Arran has 50% hoiday houses, the same as Mull, I am sure those holiday house owners including our former First Minister (I am all right Jack) would be happy with an ‘no-frills’ Western Ferries service as ‘little Jack’s’ Government were having secret meetings with Western Ferries the same time ‘little Jack’ who at the same time was buying a holiday house on Arran!
A ban on holiday houses and a break-up of large estates would transform Argyll – for the better, CalMac do a fine job for the funding they get – Western Ferries are just trying to cash in on our ETHNIC CLEANSING!
Oh, and where is the (Scottish Army) as it is needed, there is an ETHNIC CLEANSING going on, thousands of ‘our housing’ £20.000 more expensive to buy than in the cities where wages are higher, servicing the holidays, you don’t have to be good at maths to work out the consequences of that! The closing primary schools tell of our demise (LOUD AND CLEAR).
More holiday houses coming soon though AND more ‘no-frills’ EC/EU Western ‘Holiday’ Ferries too!
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It is refreshing to read comment from someone who recognises Western Ferries for what it is.
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still no campbeltown – northern ireland ferry service , another snp broken promise
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It’s ok. Be patient. I’m making one in my garden hut.
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Any sensible plan to improve transport links for Argyll would include the restitution in some respect of the regular boat services into many communities. At the turn of last century bank managers could live in Tighnabruaich and be in their Glasgow offices by 9.30 by a boat direct to Brommielaw. Most of our southern Argyll communities should be sea served. In particular Lochgoilhead, Tighnabruaich and Campbeltown which are reached by tortuous road jouneys should have vehicle/Passenger boat and ferry services to the mainland.
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When the bus ‘wars’ were at their height I still had a 3 hour wait at Kennacraig for a bus from the Islay ferry to Campbeltown as the buses went by half an hour earlier (loss of trade down Kintyer the mainland island) that was a joke and still is! Stepping on one bus the driver told me I would be better off on the other bus service, that was a joke also and shows how private competition works not-for-the-people as is also evident with the airlines going bust. The private railways get 2billion a year public money, time CalMac and West Highlands got a lot more rather than those killer submarines going by!
While I was in Campbeltown I had a good look around the closed ferry terminal housing Campbeltowns Christmas decorations. A ferry terminal Western Ferries can’t accuse CalMac of stopping them using. One would think money could be made servicing Campbeltown by the sea but Western Ferries want to go to “war” with CalMac (after their subsidy) and have Lord Robertson on the board who has a holiday house on Islay and I am sure is giving them insider information. Lord Rrobertson and the rest of the Government don’t care about us, they and fat cats need the quite West Highlands to escape to!
Islay’s first ferry today came in half empty as usally does this time of year, we live a long way away form the cities and when they come in the summer the road-rage starts and the poor roads take their toll. Islay’s private plane service on Saturday was due to be scrapped due to lack of passengers, but public Royal Mail in now funding the service and is more evidence how our holiday economy needs a major overhaul, NOW!
If I had six million in the bank like our MSP I don’t think I could relate to avarage Joe. AND our MP is obsessed with dictating his choice name for Islay’s new ferry just like ForArgyll and Islay’s rouge newspaper that our community told to stop brainwashing us on behalf of Western Ferries back in 2006.
Time the West Highlands had its own Parliment, but that’s just my opinion?
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why do calmac stop running to cumbrae and dunnon when western can run a lot later i have been told the skippers on calmac can only work so many hours per day how do western get to run later
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The ForArgyll site is interesting and has clearly taken the owner a lot of time and effort for which he should be commended.
However, the above pro-CalMac and anti-ferry-competition article is bias by any journalistic standards.
So much so, that it begs the questions:-
Does the owner of FroArgyll actually live on an island?
Does he work or have a specific interest in CalMac?
What is clear for the past 40 years is that CalMac, fine institution though it is, has made some major messes along the way. Note the new Islay Ferry Finlaggan that scandalously is too big for the pier! Such blights have caused islanders, note NOT big predatory mainland companies, but islanders who are so unhappy with CalMac to join together, volunteer their own time and effort into starting up a competing ferry service for their islands.
WHY?
As for the narrative above almost libellously acusing Western of Kite Flying. Well that is just spiteful bias guff. The md of Western has visited us several times on Arran. Were ForArgyll at any or these meetings? Were ForArgyll at any of the Clydebuilt ship launches of Western Ferry ships, or perhaps a guset at CalMac’s Polish shipyard launches!
Where on earth did ForArgyll get the figure £25,000,000 to build an Arran ship? Perhaps from a CalMac costed effort.
Sorry ForArgyll, but if you are to get more than the usual suspects (all 8 of them) contributing to your articles, maybe you need to raise your journalistic game and be a little less bias.
Lastly, how come you are so nice to the Ileach, when it wasn’t five minutes ago you were personally appearing as a guest at a certain offial venue in Castlehill at Campbeltown !
Regards,
Matt.
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For Matt: A side issue here is that we have no knowledge of having been at anything, official or unofficial, at Castlehill in Campbeltown – nor are we sufficiently clued up on the subtext of this to know what it would have signified re The Ileach if we had been.
And the only ship launch we have ever attended was that of HMS Dragon, the fourth of the new Type 45 destroyers launched at BVT in Goven. We got to that with a personal friend who was able to get us tickets – and we wrote here on the event afterwards.
The only axe we have to grind in the ferry issue is a serious concern for the integrity of the west coast service. In our view, breaking up the single bundle of routes will leave the very uneconomic lifeline services to be picked up by the taxpayer without the leaven of the higher earning services within the bundle. What sort of a deal is that for the taxpayer?
We feel too that the requirement for each operator to be in a position to supply a replacement ship ship to maintain the service should the normal ship go out of service is a requirement unlikely to be achievable, leaving some routes without a ferry perhaps for a significant enough period.
We have had an extensive and detailed conversation with Gordon Ross of Western Ferries – a service we support – and find much of what he has to say persuasive and energetic. However, his focus and vigour are applied to the specific routes he would personally be interested in making a success of running. We do not doubt that he could do that. wWe are also attracted to the service ethos manifest in the arrangements he has made for his passengers on the Hunters Quay – McInroy’s PoInt route to be bussed to Cowal in the event of weather preventing a sailing; and in accepting travel passes from pensioners.
We were not convinced that he had thought of or was particularly interested in the wider consequences of some of his proposals.
He talked about bringing two new ships onto the Islay route and said that this would then free up the two current Islay ships owned by CMAL to be part of a pool available within CMAL for unbundled route operators to hire in the case of breakdown of their own ships.
We see that as impractical and another burden on the public purse. These ships can only serve a limited number of routes because of their specific berthing requirements; and CMAL would have to maintain two idle ships rather than earn from two working ships.
There is no doubt that a good private operator could make several of the west coast routes profitable but, in our view, the consequences of breaking up the rail services does not suggest that the overall service available to the public is improved by this – and often it is significantly worsened.
The Scottish west coast ferries are largely interdependant in user terms. We are convinced that the communities concerned are best served by a single network sited in the public sector – and that is not to say that we do not believe that CalMac has no improvements to make.
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