A written parliamentary question tabled at the Scottish Parliament and answered by the Transport Minister, Keith Brown MSP, has revealed a fascinating fact that may be of interest to the Dunoon-Gourock Ferries Action Group campaigners.
The texts of the question and response follow.
The question
Index Heading: Transport Scotland
Jamie McGrigor (Highlands and Islands) (Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party): To ask the Scottish Government how many (a) scheduled sailings, (b) actual sailings and (c) sailings cancelled due to adverse weather conditions there were on the (i) Gourock to Dunoon and (ii) Wemyss Bay to Rothesay route in each month between July 2011 and September 2012.
(S4W-10317)
The answer
Mr Keith Brown MSP :
The information requested is set out in the following tables.
Sharp eyed numerates will note that the sailing performance against weather of the two services shows that:
- Argyll Ferries achieved 97.4% service on the Gourock-Dunoon route in all conditions
- CalMac achieved 97.7% service on the Wemyss Bay-Rothesay route in all conditions
The difference between the two services in reliability in all condition is an underwhelming 0.3%.
The Ferries Action Group are campaigning for boats like the former ‘Streakers’, the CalMac vehicle and passenger ferries that previously served the Dunoon-Gourock route – boats very similar to the MV Bute and the MV Argyll serving the Wemyss Bay-Rothesay route.
The Bute and the Argyll cost something like £20 million to build.
So the Dunoon-Gourock Ferries Action Group campaigners are demanding that the Scottish Government spend a minimum of £20 million to give them a service that is 0.3% more reliable in all weathers?
Don’t be silly, look at the figures and think what they mean.
Out of 15 months of operation the AFL service only had three months when it did not cancel due to weather. The Rothesay service, which is more exposed, had double that.
The AFL and Western Ferries routes cross roughly at their mid-points and so permit direct comparisons of weather reliability to be made. Every time the AFL service is off due to weather take a look at the Western website and it is an almost certain bet it will be running to timetable.
The last time the AFL service was off they said it was because the winds were gusting to … (wait for it)… 25mph. That is not even a strong breeze.
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Comparing Western with the tubs is like, well, comparing apples with grapes. Who’s being silly now, ferryman?
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Jim you are missing Ferryman’s point Western continue when the tubs are unable to i.e. their size and tonnage are a contributing factor to reliability. Pontoons will not make a single iota of difference to what passengers experience on the crossing. They will not stop weather cancellations nor will they improve passenger safety. Pontoons float, boats float, things that float are subject to waves so unless the pontoons are large and very heavy (expensive) they will move, not necessarily synchronously, but it wont stop the boats pitching up and down any more than the link spans do. They will be a complete waste of tax payers money. If pontoons were such a good idea why did not Western design their berthing arrangements using them.
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‘timeous’ – WF are running a primarily vehicle service requiring ramps / link spans, which also form the passenger access, so for WF to design their berthing arrangements also using pontoons would be nonsensical.
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Exactly link spans are more stable than pontoons. Thanks for agreeing however circuitously.
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If you twist what other people say you’re unlikely to be taken seriously.
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Western do use linkspans which are effectively pontoons.
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Western interlock the ferry with the linkspan to try and prevent differential movement.
The point remains the same the primary purpose of a pontoon is to compensate for tidal differences not waves.
Pontoons offer no advantage over a linkspan. They have the disadvantage that their design tends to be more vessel specific.
It is a complete nonsense to put small boats on a route, watch them bob up and down (even in their own wake) then say lets spend millions changing the shore infrastructure in an ineffective way.
Get decent vessels – problem solved, simples.
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Ah Mr T, still clutching at straws.
At least when Argyll goes off you still have western to rely on and with only minimal disruption, the people in bute have an extra hour and a half diversion.
With pontoons the Argyll service would be more reliable. And would push the service reliability above the Bute service.
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You’re a brave man, PW, for daring to mention pontoons – there’s a visceral hatred of them in some quarters, and you risk being condemned to hell and damnation for ever and ever.
P.S. a local newsfilm clip of the storm in New York shows one of the big Staten Island ferry pontoons moving ever so slightly in a heavy swell – no problems.
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The purpose of pontoons is to cater for tidal changes in water levels. It is not their purpose to cater for waves. In general a pontoon will perform less well than a linkspan because the pontoon will move with waves, and probably out of time with the vessel.
Pontoons are used for passenger only services because they are cheaper, not because they are better, than linkspans. If you already have a linkspan you would be daft to add a pontoon.
RW wrote: “P.S. a local newsfilm clip of the storm in New York shows one of the big Staten Island ferry pontoons moving ever so slightly in a heavy swell – no problems.”
So what you are saying is the pontoon in the US almost managed to behave as well as a linkspan, it almost managed not to move in a heavy swell. A small vessel attempting to use the pontoon would of course have been bobbing around like a cork and it would be difficult and dangerous to get on and off it – so the service would cancel.
The main problem in Dunoon is vessel size not the berthing arrangements.
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ferryman – ‘if you already have a linkspan you would be daft to have a pontoon’ – is that why you, and others, seem to be blind to the sheer inconvenience for foot passengers at Gourock of the link span location?
It seems to have been designed entirely with regard to vehicle users, with little or no thought for people traipsing between boat and train.
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I am a regular foot passenger, and I use the train. Adding pontoons would not help me one bit and would probably make matters worse.
My major problem is boats that cannot sail because they are inaquate for the purpose to which they are being put.
Once the major problem is resolved I would be happy for other inconveniences to be dealt with, but lets not put the cart before the horse.
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ferryman – ‘once the major problem is resolved’ – all the problems are surely inter-related, and the real need is for serious commitment to long-term investment in suitable boats and landing facilities, with due regard for the transfer between boat and train. At present the Gourock link span layout is in conflict with the train-boat relationship for foot passengers, and the experience is dismal.
The same commitment, in the face of the same experience, applies to the Gourock – Kilcreggan service.
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RW: “the real need is for serious commitment to long-term investment in suitable boats and landing facilities”
Dunoon pier has been around for about 120 years. There has never been any serious complaint about landing facilities.
There are serious complaints about the present inadequate vessels and investment is needed in suitable ones.
What you don’t do is start spending large sums of money redesigning shore facilities around inadeqate or unknown vessels.
If the Council really are still looking at pontoons I’ll be interested to know what vessels they are designing them around and how they are modeling the vessel/wave/pontoon interaction.
Linkspans, as I am sure you will now know, are more stable, are less design dependent on the vessel, and cause less issues with reflected wash.
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Ferryman – Are you up to speed? If there’s never been any serious complaint about landing facilities at Dunoon perhaps everyone’s living in a past century, or they’re sheep?
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Mr Wade that shows a remarkably ill informed post on things maritime. Pontoons will not make a halfpenny worth of difference to the passenger experience on the crossing. Nor will it improve to any real extent the boarding experience of passengers in rough weather. See my post above.
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‘timeous’ – to state the obvious, the whole point of pontoons (all over the world) is that they avoid awkward differences in level between boat and landing, so accusing PW of being ill informed is both stupid and hypocritical.
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So do moveable link spans so who is the stupid one. Particularly when pontoons respond to waves as do the boats and almost never in sync. So a boat would be rising to a wave whilst a pontoon is sinking to a trough. Please think it through before you make ignorant remarks and you might be taken more seriously.
Pontoons are ideal in harbour or anywhere that that waves are unlikely to occur neither of which is true at Dunoon – open to easterly waves as is Gourock
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The right design of pontoon can handle these conditions – the Staten Island terminal has a very similar degree of exposure to Gourock or Dunoon – are you one of the ‘can’t do’ brigade? – arrogance is surely not the answer to anything.
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I think you will find that most if not all the closures of the Rothesay ferries is due to one of the piers being exposed to high winds/waves making berthing hazardous. This is not really related to the size of the boats. Western have cleverly designed their terminals with shelter from most wind directions.
The AF boats appear to be withdrawn because of sea conditions on the route as often as not.
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actually your wrong there jim,
the size of the rothesay boats is the actually the main reason for the cancellations but for the opposite reasons than the dunoon route, the bute and the argyll are actually too big, their superstructure acts like a huge sail and in these winds the boat is simply blown into the pier or away from the pier at weymss bay and thus cant dock,
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“The AF boats appear to be withdrawn because of sea conditions on the route as often as not.”
Yes, they would be perfectly adequate for a number of tasks where weather reliability is not the primary concern. Attempting to use them to provide a frequent year round commuter service is just daft. They have demonstrated that even summer weather conditions can easily defeat them.
What is particulary galling is that the Ali Cat ran along side the old streakers and so her inability to cope with the weather (when the streaker service sailed on fine) should have been perfectly obvious for all to see in her sailing record – had they bothered to look.
We got the Argyll Flyer simply because that was the only boat they could find in the timescales. She is better than the Ali Cat, but not by that much, as she notches up a high percentage of the cancellations.
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I have never read so much opinionated, ill-informed guff as I have read in many of the above postings!
It’s marvellous that we have so many ‘experts’ in our midst.
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