Comment posted RMT off target in ballotting west coast ferry workers on strike action by ferryman.
Transport Scotland seem destined to roll out the mistakes it made on the Dunoon Gourock route to other parts of Scotland.
One critical issue is the provision of relief vessels. CalMac with multiple routes is able to move vessels between routes. Once CalMac is broken up, and that seems to be the intent, cover will not be provided for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. So half-service will run for weeks at a time.
Marketing will also disappear, Dunoon is almost invisible in CalMacs literature now.
Transport Scotland probably will not even bother to specify that the vessels have to run in the sea conditions on the routes so people will end up with bathtubs as we did on the Dunoon Gourock crossing.
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- Jim of course it should not appear in the literature you are quite right.
So I am of Scottish descent living in America and and I decide I am going to travel round Scotland and the Western Isles. Heaven forbid anybody would make it easy to this, I might mistakenly assume I was welcome.
No. Much better that I somehow need to figure out where the crossings are and which company runs which crossing, then get separate timetables, then try to mach up the sailings and times, then buy separate tickets (no discounts across several operators of course).
You are absolutely right. Even though CalMac is a state owned company that owns Argyll Ferries it really would be ridiculous for them to include the route.
Of course the reason they don’t include the route is because it is embarrassing to be associated with Argyll Ferries as the company is designed to fail. However CalMac, and it is CalMac, have just notched up their first yellow card with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency – they cannot escape the fact that CalMac own and are responsible for Argyll Ferries.
Recent comments by ferryman
- Reminder: Argyll Ferries on ‘refit’ service schedule
The scottish Government has failed to deliver on the transferable ferry tickets it was going to setup. The bus scheme is a bodge that adds anything upto two hours to travel time.Any news on what they are going to do for Cowal Games or are they just going to try another gamble on the weather.
- New Campbeltown ferry pilot – a whale beached before it starts
They did not refuse to give car/ferry passenger service to Dunoon – they took it away!They went back on a maniefesto committment to provide new vehicle ferries and then to cap it all they made an incompetent botch by putting in a totally and uttery unreliable passenger only service.
- Inexplicable blame game from MSP on lack of cross-ticketing on Dunoon ferries
“no carrier could justify running a heavier and thirstier craft than necessary”The “than necessary” is the critical point. If you are specifying a commuter service to get people to and from work, hospital college etc. then it is necessary and perfectly possible to specify vessels able to operate reliably on the Clyde.
What you do not do is accept vessels which regularly and repeatedly fail to run for days at a time.
Newsroom wrote “physical facts are the physical facts”, they are indeed and the current bathtubs are far too small for reliable operation. In any case the Ali Cat was operating unreliably on the route already so her current performance is no surprise.
- Inexplicable blame game from MSP on lack of cross-ticketing on Dunoon ferries
I take exception to your statement that “The Argyll Ferries’ passenger boats, being necessarily lighter craft, are more prone to delay and cancellation in a bit of a blow”.Transport Scotland should have specified vessels able to provide a reliable service. They did not hence the problem.
Also the gentleman referred to in the article in the Observer concluded by saying he did not want a lot of energy devoted to cross ticketing etc he wanted it devoted to the getting his town centre ferry service taking him to the trains to work.
That of course makes sense because even if he could transfer totally reliably to and from Western at no cost at all he would still be late for work.
- Western Ferries: new sailings, inflation rises in fares – and protection for concessions
“the consensus seemed to be that they would be too expensive to be used as passenger only ferries”Exactly. Here you have ferries known to be reliable in the sea conditions on the route, able to operate at a fantastic profit when carrying vehicles but not economic carrying only passengers.
AF are suspended again today, they were off all day yesterday, because they use bathtubs not remotely suited for the purpose to which they are being put.
The sensible thing is to use larger ferries on the town centre route and let them carry vehicles. As CalMac demonstrated, before the Government of the day stopped them, putting on more sailings increased revenue and cut subsidy.
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Transport Scotland seem destined to roll out the mistakes it made on the Dunoon Gourock route to other parts of Scotland.
One critical issue is the provision of relief vessels. CalMac with multiple routes is able to move vessels between routes. Once CalMac is broken up, and that seems to be the intent, cover will not be provided for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. So half-service will run for weeks at a time.
Marketing will also disappear, Dunoon is almost invisible in CalMacs literature now.
Transport Scotland probably will not even bother to specify that the vessels have to run in the sea conditions on the routes so people will end up with bathtubs as we did on the Dunoon Gourock crossing.
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Absolutely. The relief ships issue is a major one.
CalMac is expert at the chess game which is moving ships around to keep all routes supplied if one member of the fleet has to come out of service unexpectedly.
With the variety of ships, community need and berthing facilities, this ship shuffle is second nature to CalMac. A new operator would not have this expertise – they might also not have enough routes to shuffle appropriate ships around to maintain a service, if not a full one, to all destinations.
The routes identified for tendering look to us as if the potential need to move ships between routes is driving the make up of the bundles.
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Perhaps TS has been looking at how other, forward-thinking and progressive countries run their ferry services, where no state-owned near-monopolistic operators run boats to their own agendas.
And it’s obviously escaped your notice that Dunoon is no longer served by CalMac – why would it appear in any of their literature? Or is that more wishing thinking?
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Jim of course it should not appear in the literature you are quite right.
So I am of Scottish descent living in America and and I decide I am going to travel round Scotland and the Western Isles. Heaven forbid anybody would make it easy to this, I might mistakenly assume I was welcome.
No. Much better that I somehow need to figure out where the crossings are and which company runs which crossing, then get separate timetables, then try to mach up the sailings and times, then buy separate tickets (no discounts across several operators of course).
You are absolutely right. Even though CalMac is a state owned company that owns Argyll Ferries it really would be ridiculous for them to include the route.
Of course the reason they don’t include the route is because it is embarrassing to be associated with Argyll Ferries as the company is designed to fail. However CalMac, and it is CalMac, have just notched up their first yellow card with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency – they cannot escape the fact that CalMac own and are responsible for Argyll Ferries.
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Actually, if you go to page 45 of the current edition of CalMac’s ‘pocket-sized’ timetable, you will indeed find a timeteable for the Gourock-Dunoon service, helpfully and brightly coloured red to indicate that the service is provided by another operator and not by CalMac themselves. It would be more to the point if, within the same section of the timetable, CalMac saw fit to include the Western Ferries service too as the element of competition is no longer there. Or is that delving into the realms of wishful thinking again, this time on my part?
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