Ferry fatuity
Arran’s ferry services have deteriorated sharply ever since the misconceived Caledonian Isles was launched. Built to maximise profits from the summer tourist trade, no thought was given to her suitability as a year-round service vessel. As a result, Arran is stuck with increasingly unreliable connections to the mainland that break down entirely in bad weather.
Making travel plans or ensuring the arrival of both visitors, home-comers and vital supplies is impossible. Even finding out what is going on presents difficulties, for although the status update on CalMac’s website gives news of proposed services for the day it does not reveal where the ferry has gone, thus confounding intelligent guesswork. The ludicrous excuse given is that the website does not have enough space, but we all know cyber space is limitless to the competent.
Following the Christmas storms and total breakdown of ferry function, countless disaffected travellers look forward to the 3-week annual absence of the Caledonian Isles and a period of blessed reliability when Captain McCrindle sailed the Clansman daily, at least to Gourock if Ardrossan was inaccessible. Older Arran residents look back to the golden days of the paddle steamers that rocked and battled their way through every known weather condition, providing a constant, if rough, reliability. In those days, you could be at the Broomielaw in Glasgow’s centre in less than two hours. Half a century of technological improvement has left Arran far worse served than it used to be.
CalMac’s response to the long-endured crisis has been bizarre. The proposed vastly expensive rebuild of the Brodick terminal is irrelevant, since simple dredging would deal with the shallow-water problem. A glitzy airport-style terminal will do nothing to solve the mainland access problem – and do we trust lifts as the means of passenger access? We have not forgotten the constant pantomime over the failure of the gangplank mechanism supposed to provide access to the Caldonian Isles. Neither does the deployed personnel seem confidence-inspiring. Guy Dale-Smith, the company’s new Head of Marine, wrote a survey of potential mainland ports that included Campbeltown, thus suggesting ignorance of where Arran actually is. Oban, in passenger terms, is closer than Campbeltown, but access to either depends on the almost non-existent Lochranza ferry, cut to near-zero in the winter. Fairlie and Largs would work perfectly well and lack nothing more than a linkspan. Would it not make sense to dump the Brodick rebuild plans and spend a small amount of the money saved on providing docking facilities at one of these alternatives?
The public mood on Arran has gone beyond exasperation. People are seriously angry about the continuing indifference to the island’s needs and to our human rights. Confidence in the secretive, undemocratic Ferry Committee is at a low ebb. Arran’s population has a right to be heard. It is time for CalMac to look beyond its narrow profit-making interests and accept that they have a duty to provide a tenable public service.
