Interesting article that makes an ok point then shoots itself in the foot by pointing out it’s proposing a 17 hour ferry route that would only be viable with extensive government subsidy. The direction of travel has been to reduce the variety of ferry services and particularly with the P&O imbroglio it’s hard to see that changing.
Personally I’m more optimistic about intermodal rail freight as being a bigger part of logistics in the future, it’s a massive growth sector at the moment and more spread out – Dover isn’t actually a particularly big port by cargo value but it’s cornered the lorry roll on/roll off market. Freight trains through the Channel Tunnel are increasingly viable now but need more structural gauging on this side of it to increase route availability, and there’s a lot of port-based rail freight interchanges popping up as well.
There used to be ferry links between Scotland and the mainland, turns out hardly anyone used it so they cancelled it.
Scotland struggling to sort out building replacement pair of ferries for routes they do own on a state owned yard.
It’s possible, but they would have to get a decent person / team to run the project and find better contractors.
For info, these ships now at 2.5 times cost and some 5 years behind planned delivery’s including 6-8 months because they installed wrong length wires that not reach where meant to install.
All while ferry network is short ships and ones they do have old and age is making them more unreliable than used to.
I suppose the SNP is a bit weary of doing anything ferry related now.
if its commercially viable, yes, if not, then no.
Isn’t this putting the cart before the horse, given that the proposal hinges on a ‘devolved Scotland, back in the EU’?
I propose an Edinburgh – Rotterdam North Sea tunnel. Add some oil and gas drilling and fishing without needing a boat options and it will pay for itself.
Alternatively, place every oil rig in the North sea after each other and effectively create a bridge between the two.
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Cairn Ryan to Dublin perhaps??
Interesting article that makes an ok point then shoots itself in the foot by pointing out it’s proposing a 17 hour ferry route that would only be viable with extensive government subsidy. The direction of travel has been to reduce the variety of ferry services and particularly with the P&O imbroglio it’s hard to see that changing.
Personally I’m more optimistic about intermodal rail freight as being a bigger part of logistics in the future, it’s a massive growth sector at the moment and more spread out – Dover isn’t actually a particularly big port by cargo value but it’s cornered the lorry roll on/roll off market. Freight trains through the Channel Tunnel are increasingly viable now but need more structural gauging on this side of it to increase route availability, and there’s a lot of port-based rail freight interchanges popping up as well.
There used to be ferry links between Scotland and the mainland, turns out hardly anyone used it so they cancelled it.
Scotland struggling to sort out building replacement pair of ferries for routes they do own on a state owned yard.
It’s possible, but they would have to get a decent person / team to run the project and find better contractors.
For info, these ships now at 2.5 times cost and some 5 years behind planned delivery’s including 6-8 months because they installed wrong length wires that not reach where meant to install.
All while ferry network is short ships and ones they do have old and age is making them more unreliable than used to.
I suppose the SNP is a bit weary of doing anything ferry related now.
if its commercially viable, yes, if not, then no.
Isn’t this putting the cart before the horse, given that the proposal hinges on a ‘devolved Scotland, back in the EU’?
I propose an Edinburgh – Rotterdam North Sea tunnel. Add some oil and gas drilling and fishing without needing a boat options and it will pay for itself.
Alternatively, place every oil rig in the North sea after each other and effectively create a bridge between the two.