Disgraceful squandering of taxpayers’ money on ferries

Sir

I wish to endorse in its entirety the letter, headed ‘Ferry design intransigence’ by your correspondent John Lamont, Arran Banner, June 2 2023. In 2018 Professor Alf Baird presented a paper to The Interferry Conference in Cancun, Mexico, in which he made a detailed comparison between CMAL’s monohull Finlaggan and Pentland Ferry’s catamaran Pentalina, vessels of similar age and capacity. There the comparison ends.

Build cost at 2018 prices for the monohull were £25m and for the catamaran, £7m. Fuel consumption of the catamaran is 43 per cent of that of the monohull. The difference in total annual operating costs at current prices is a staggering £6.7m.

Over a 25 or 30-year probable lifespan, that represents a mind boggling £167m and bear in mind this saving is for a single vessel on a single route.

The Scottish Government, Transport Scotland and CMAL have studiously ignored the actions and success of Pentland Ferries which has, for 16 years, operated an unsubsidised service with catamarans, in conditions worse than any experienced by the CMAL vessels and with minimal weather-related cancellations.

It is most unfortunate that, with a further six large monohulls on order, implementation of the necessary changes will, in the case of these vessels, be delayed by a further 25 to 30 years, not to mention the tens of millions spent on infrastructure, work which would not have been required for the shorter and shallower catamarans.

When will this government and Transport Scotland clip the CMAL wings and put a stop to this disgraceful squandering of taxpayer’s money?

Yours,

J Patrick Maclean,

Oban.