Daft ferries review?

On December 21st, the Scottish Government issued a “Draft Plan for Consultation” on the Scottish Ferry Services, drawn up by Transport Scotland. The draft plan is available online here and is open for public comment until 30th March. It covers the whole of Scotland but the section of interest to Arran starts on page 21 and is reproduced here:

• Arran currently has two ferry routes; the principal route is from Ardrossan to Brodick, and the secondary route is between Lochranza and Claonaig on Kintyre.

• Currently a typical service day on Ardrossan to Brodick would run from early morning to early evening, with the first sailing to the mainland around 8.30 am and the last sailing around 7.30 pm. The Friday service offers an additional sailing later in the evening. There are around 5 to 6 sailings per day Monday to Saturday, less on a Sunday.

• Our needs based assessment for Arran suggests increasing the service provision on the Ardrossan to Brodick route so that the new operating day runs from very early in the morning (around 7 am) through to much later in the evening (at least 10 pm). We also suggest increasing the frequency of the service so that it closely matches a shuttle service. This proposal would substantially increase the connection between Arran and the Scottish mainland.

• There are no low cost practicable options for how we might increase the service provision on Ardrossan to Brodick. Currently the route is served by one large vessel. To double-crew this vessel so that we could extend the operating day would be extremely expensive.

• A better long-term option would be to replace the existing vessel with two smaller vessels. These vessels would be more fuel efficient and each vessel would require a smaller number of crew than the current vessel. So while there is a substantial initial investment, the increase in running costs is significantly less. We may be able to achieve this change during the next CHFS contract (2013-2019) or it may be that this change is only possible as part of the vessel renewal programme to be published as part of the Final Ferries Plan.

• We recognise that the current harbour infrastructure at Brodick acts as a capacity constraint and that this needs to be addressed prior to the introduction of RET on this route. Major investment is planned at Brodick to replace the ageing harbour infrastructure. That work will be taken forward by CMAL over the current Spending Review period 2012/13 to 2014/15. In addition to addressing the current capacity problems, the improvement work will improve the operational resilience of Brodick for existing and future vessels.

Claonaig to Lochranza

• Claonaig to Lochranza largely fulfils a specialist function in the movement of dangerous goods. In terms of passenger and vehicle numbers it is very much a secondary route to the Ardrossan and Brodick service – for every passenger travelling between Claonaig and Lochranza, there are around 16 passengers travelling between Ardrossan to Brodick. The figure for cars is around 9 to 1 in favour of Ardrossan to Brodick.

• It would be our intention to review services between Claonaig and Lochranza following the upgrade to Ardrossan to Brodick.

• In summary, our proposal is (a) for the Ardrossan to Brodick service to be upgraded to a two-vessel service operating a more frequent shuttle service through to the late evening and (b) services between Claonaig to Lochranza would be reviewed following these changes to the Ardrossan to Brodick service.

• The community is asked for their views on these proposals.see http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QZ25CFT