Ferry travel for island residents: is this equity with mainland citizens?
Extract of open letter to Paul Wheelhouse, Minister for energy, connectivity and the islands.
You will be aware of this petition (http://chng.it/ rKZpYRxBS5 ) which asks that island residents across the ferry network be given some rights of priority booking to ensure that their reasonable travel needs between home and the mainland are secured.
I had an extensive correspondence with yourself and Robbie Drummond about this last year. I have written to Mr. Drummond again and he has reiterated what he said then: CalMac cannot give priority to island residents because it is required by the terms of its contract with Transport Scotland to treat all passengers exactly the same. This has also been confirmed by Transport Scotland who wrote to me on July 8 stating, ‘The Clyde & Hebrides Ferry Services contract is quite explicit in that “the Operator must ensure that all bookings and reservations are dealt with on a first come first served basis. There must be no discrimination between one ferry user and other”’.
Island life has many advantages but the requirement to cross miles of water when leaving or returning home unavoidably constrains the ability of residents to travel. The weather, mechanical breakdowns and limited ferry capacity are all facts of life which have to be accommodated. The journeys of islanders will always be longer, slower and more expensive than those of mainland residents. By and large island residents realise that these relative disadvantages are consequences of their own choices and accept them as such but even taking this into account it is not reasonable to maintain that the current situation represents anything like a position of equity between Scottish island residents and Scottish mainland residents travelling between their homes and mainland Scotland.
The ferries are the only practicable roads to the islands but their carrying capacity is severely limited and inadequate for the volume of traffic which wishes to use them. On Islay residents are outnumbered by visitors 40 to one even before taking freight traffic into account. Individual visitors come to the island once, perhaps twice, in a year for their holidays. They can and do book their passage months in advance. Their travel needs are not comparable with those of island residents. Neither are those of freight. These other users outcompete the island’s residents by sheer weight of numbers and the practical effect of this is that the travel needs of tourists and freight take priority by force over the sort of reasonable, routine,
day to day travel needs of the island residents which are taken for granted by those who live on the mainland. No resident of Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness, or indeed any place on the mainland accessible by public highway needs to plan and book ahead sometimes weeks in advance so that they can travel to see their dentist, buy a new fridge, get their car repaired or visit with their parents, children or grandchildren. No mainland resident, having travelled from their home without fixing a definite return date, faces the prospect of hours or days waiting in a queue and nights sleeping in a hotel not knowing when they might eventually get home. No mainland resident has to book a space for their car on the public road weeks ahead of the time that they hope to drive on it. This is not just a problem for Islay or just a problem of the Covid emergency. Even in normal times, across the western isles on many busy tourist routes
ferries are booked up weeks in advance by visitors and freight so that island residents experience significant difficulties in travelling. The current arrangements obviously disadvantage islanders, are a clear impediment to their ability to travel, make a mockery of the much repeated designation of the ferries as a Lifeline Service and are contrary to the implied promise of ‘road equivalent tariff’ that the ferries provide a passage to the islands for residents which is as easy and as cheap as the open road.
This unfairness could easily be addressed by changing CalMac’s contract and requiring them to reserve a small proportion of ferry berths until 48 hours before each sailing which could only be booked by island residents, who would be required to present a photo ID resident’s ferry card when doing so and again when travelling. This type of solution has been used in other situations,
is easy to administer, is inexpensive and has been suggested as a constructive approach on many previous occasions.
The failure of Transport Scotland to take this or any equivalent alternative action to redress this inequity suggests that, without public discussion or consultation, it has tacitly determined that equity between Scottish island residents and Scottish mainland residents travelling between their homes and other parts of mainland Scotland is satisfied by the opportunity to compete on equal terms for ferry places with all other travellers to the islands. It suggests that Transport Scotland does not recognise the increasing unfairness to island residents of this unequal competition and does not understand how much of a burden and a worry travel for island residents has become.
In this context, I would be grateful if you would answer the following questions.
Does Transport Scotland consider that equity between Scottish island residents and Scottish mainland residents in travelling between their homes and any part of the Scottish mainland is fully satisfied by the island resident’s opportunity to compete on a first come first served basis with all other persons who wish to travel to and from the islands?
If the answer is ‘Yes’ will you please give details of the decision making process and the reasoning that has been used by Transport Scotland in making this decision? Will you also tell me where details of these processes, reasons and the decision itself have been recorded and are available to the public?
If the answer is ‘No’ will you please confirm that Transport Scotland could make arrangements to give priority booking rights for ferry travel to and from their home island to Scottish island residents if it wished by changing the conditions its contract with CalMac to instruct them to do so?
Finally, I would be grateful if you would comment on the status and utility of “Island Proofing” and the ‘Islands Bill’ in this context. Specifically, why should Scottish island residents have any confidence that the constraints and inequities consequent on living on an island will be recognised and ameliorated while Transport Scotland continues to tolerate this particularly egregious example?