Ferries Still in Contention
Ferries Still in Contention
[Ed. note: Apologies for the length of this piece - Michael Grey is hard to edit]
If you have read this column from time to time over the years, you will know that I am an unashamed enthusiast for ferry transport. Whether it is the Woolwich Free Ferry that trundles across the Thames or some 60,000gt floating palace of pleasure, cruising through the Mediterranean or North Sea, it is, and always has been, my favourite means of locomotion. If travelling is said to be better than arriving, a decent ferry crossing invariably makes the ultimate destination an anti-climax, and I eagerly anticipate the return journey. Which, I confess, makes me a bit of a bore on holiday.
I was saddened considerably by the recent news that the old ferry crossing over the River Clyde, from Yoker to Renfrew, which has been operated non-stop for the past 500 years at least , is to cease at the end of this month. When I was about six, a voyage on this craft, to see the busy shipyards lying wall to wall as far as the eye could see, was a voyage to be eagerly anticipated. From there, I never looked back. There is some sort of plan to replace the venerable ferries with a curious design of amphibious bus, but it doesn’t look too promising, and this little relic of Clydeside history may well go the same way as 95% of all the shipyards.
Just a few years ago, ferries seemed to be in headlong retreat. The fixed links proposed by various consortia hoping to make enormous sums of money constructing bridges and tunnels appeared to be taking over the world. Eurotunnel triumphantly remade a physical link to the continent swept away in the aftermath of the last Ice Age. The great Danish bridges joined Jutland to Sweden, while Japanese bridge builders seemed intent on making those islands one large land-mass. There were mad plans to bridge the Straits of Gibraltar, while the cement producers of Sicily and Calabria were laying in stocks in anticipation of a gigantic construction across Messina Straits.
It was known as infrastructural improvement and appealed to local politicians no end, soaking up notional numbers of cement mixers who would dent unemployment figures, and assuring the said politicians of important posts on the boards of construction companies. A new genre of science fiction appeared with the publication of the traffic forecasts, while those estimates of construction costs always seemed (in retrospect) to be based chiefly on hope triumphing over expectation.
In all these proposals, the fact that the crossing, which was to be bridged or tunnelled, was traversed by an adequacy of perfectly good ferries, was invariably and pointedly ignored by the promoters of these vast schemes. In vain did the ferry operators politely point out that they were perfectly capable of accommodating traffic growth by the simple expedient of constructing new ferries as demand dictated. Ferries seemed a bit passé and for some reason could not be considered “infrastructure”, a word which was all the rage. Perhaps the politicians recalled awful journeys across storm-tossed seas, as they retched to leeward and clung to the salt swept rails. And there is a strand of human nature that will always incline to the new and exciting, rather than the tried and trusted.
Nobody could deny that these bridges and tunnels actually work, and over time imprint themselves upon the economy of a region so that they appear justified. It is just that the timescales are rather longer than anticipated, and the chances are that the original investors will have lost their shirts. People forget quite fast in the fast-changing world, I reflected just recently, reading the triumphant results from Eurotunnel which showed that the hole under the Channel actually managed to make a profit, despite the economic climate and the 2008-9 fire which damaged the accounts severely.
It pains me to say it, but except when there is the wrong sort of snow, or the aforesaid conflagration, there is no more convenient way of getting from London to Paris or Brussels. But just as we should not forget the sacrifice of all those workers who died building the Panama Canal, we should, as we speed under La Manche, raise a glass to all those countless investors who sacrificed several billions of their hard-earned money, before this excellent piece of infrastructure was “restructured”.
I suppose that the minor miracle is that ferries still survive, and even prosper, despite the fearsome competition from the fixed links in so many part of the world. Just a few miles north of the Oresund Bridge three ferry lines still provide competitive services between Elsinore and Helsingborg, while even at rush hour, when the Copenhagen – Malmoe trains are packed, the wide carriageways of the bridge are almost empty.
It is freight that has been the salvation of most ferry companies, the year round lifeblood that keeps big ships full even when the hanging cardecks are stowed away. True, there are ferry routes which have been problematical, mostly longer passages where there are shorter alternatives, and limited opportunities for relieving passengers of sufficient money to justify the luxurious appointments and all that fuel. But new routes appear regularly, while we are seeing the emergence of interesting developments in ferries and ro-ros which offer coastal links, such as those of Grimaldi around the Atlantic coasts of Northern Europe.
“Motorways of the Sea”, the concept developed by the European Commission is a decent idea, helping to get some of the coastal links up and running, with some modest seed-finance, even though there are always going to be arguments about those ports and services which are not selected for this preferment. There is a new generation of ferry emerging from designers which will be more flexible, and infinitely more economic, to operate than some of the ships which have enjoyed, for hard worked commercial vessels, astonishingly long lives.
Should we be optimistic about ferry prospects? The facts speak for themselves, with so many new services coming along, although you don’t need that long a memory to recall the overtonnage, the price wars and promising routes wrecked by just too much competition. There are exciting new designs emerging for Harwich-Hook and the Dover Straits, both of which can offer something new in the travelling experience.
We shouldn’t ignore this important matter of what a particular route and its ships can offer the punters. You have to be a bit of a masochist, or in a terrible hurry, to opt for air transport, where there are ferry or rail alternatives, but if the payload is freight, it is the treatment of the drivers, and the efficiency of the terminals which keeps the lorries rolling long after the holiday cars have vanished. The ferries can capitalise on drivers’ hours regulations, on weekend traffic restrictions, and give hauliers their money’s worth. I guess it is something you appreciate, after you have spent five hours looking at the back of the trailer in front fighting your way down from the Midlands, or been caught up in “Operation Stack” on the M20. Once ferries were largely run for the convenience of their crews, but today all on board know that usage is mostly discretionary, and you have to work hard to keep the passengers loyal.
I used to think that heaven was a continental train pulling up at the Hook alongside a fine overnight boat with an excellent restaurant and comfortable bed waiting to take me to England. Oslo-Copenhagen runs it a close second, despite this enthusiasm for moving ferry terminals away from the centre of town, into the suburbs. There are arguably not enough inter-city ferries, and this is perhaps something that should be encouraged, if we are to admit that ferries are undoubtedly “infrastructure” and have a role in removing congestion from the roads.
Ferries always represent something of an opportunity. There are still wide estuaries, towns left unconnected except for long road journeys, which could be joined up with a quick link across the water. This year, for instance, you will be able to get from Devon to South Wales and back again on a regular service. Will it work? I have no idea, but who knows, enough people from each side may discover the manifold attractions of the other, and the route will be established and go on to prosper.
It was only in the 1930s that the last of the steamers (let’s call them ferries) which ran up and down the North Sea coast from Scotland to the Thames disappeared, victims to railway sleeping cars, and perhaps the somewhat basic facilities endured by the passengers. In the 1990s, there were some interesting studies which suggested that there might be an economic case for renewing North-South services, that could take freight off the congested roads. A big fast ro-pax taking you overnight from London to the Forth would be a ferry well worth taking, whether you were a passenger or a load of freight. Why not take a boat from New York to Miami, rather than choke your way down the Interstate? San Francisco to LA, for the same reasons? Better than sitting for two hours in an airport, awaiting the indignities of your “full-body scanner” security sweep, and struggling to do up your shoelaces.
We need to start to talk about these ferry opportunities again, because the economic slump won’t last forever, but the road congestion probably will, no matter what government we end up with in May. Let’s vote for more and better ferries, even if this desirable objective fails to emerge in any manifesto.