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Anyone passing Barrowford Locks?


LadyG

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13 hours ago, dmr said:

 

I suspect most old boaters with many years experience would not see a crisis at all but be impressed by how well maintained the canals are.

Last summer we went from the Rochdale summit to Lechlade and back. We had two minor delays on the South Oxford whilst CRT came to sort out lock problems, and a really grim couple of days coming up the Rochdale due to lack of water. Only once did I have to dive into my toolbox (to get through a stubborn swingbridge). Its 200 years old, its not a theme park (yet), its full of boaters who are no longer self sufficient and have unrealistic expectations of customer service, it could be much better, but it works.


I guess if I’d spent 200k on a boat, built to a ridiculous high spec, only to crawl at 2mph along a ditch, I might be upset to find I had to actually work a lock myself! 
 

 

I don’t reckon a license should be set according to the wealth of a boater or the value of a  boat as others have suggested. 
I like the fact that the canals are an equal playing field. We all pay the same according to length (and now width) and have access to the same amenities. It’s a fair system. 


If anyone thinks they’re not paying enough for their license fee then set up an annual/monthly donation to CRT.

if the friends programme is still running, 100% of any donation is ear marked for the canals and usually gets used to match funds from elsewhere. So get your cheque book out and donate your extra grand. 


 

 




 

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1 hour ago, IanD said:

This isn't about punishing owners of long or wide boats, it's just trying to get some fair fee for the extra space they take up where it matters, which is locks (and water usage) and busy moorings.

 

 

Don't heavy wide boats use less water in the locks because they displace more ?

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

Don't heavy wide boats use less water in the locks because they displace more ?

 

 

Tongue  In Cheek.jpg

Only if going downhill. Otherwise it is more (see 2015 thread on this forum for an extensive debate).

 

Some might argue that wide beam boaters are less experienced and much more likely to waste water - but that is sheer prejudice . . .  (You could even construct a similar case for shiny v non-shiny boats!)

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Just now, Mike Todd said:

Some might argue that wide beam boaters are less experienced and much more likely to waste water - but that is sheer prejudice . . .

 

I have helped some very experienced boaters deliberately waste lots of water trying to flush a stuck boat out of a lock ...

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1 hour ago, Goliath said:


I guess if I’d spent 200k on a boat, built to a ridiculous high spec, only to crawl at 2mph along a ditch, I might be upset to find I had to actually work a lock myself! 
 

I don’t reckon a license should be set according to the wealth of a boater or the value of a  boat as others have suggested. 
I like the fact that the canals are an equal playing field. We all pay the same according to length (and now width) and have access to the same amenities. It’s a fair system. 

If anyone thinks they’re not paying enough for their license fee then set up an annual/monthly donation to CRT.

if the friends programme is still running, 100% of any donation is ear marked for the canals and usually gets used to match funds from elsewhere. So get your cheque book out and donate your extra grand. 
 

 

Depends on your definition of "fair". Boaters at the moment have presumably planned their income/lifestyle/outgoings allowing for the current/historical levels of license fees.

 

Now say the fees have to increase significantly, say by 50% (or more?) across the board, which seems to be what is needed to get the canals back into a reasonable state of repair -- assuming CART can find similar increases from their other money sources.

 

This will undoubtedly cause problems for the less well-off boaters -- usually on older less valuable boats -- who are just keeping their financial heads above water, and will undoubtedly drive some of them off the canals for good. This will not cause a problem for better-off boaters -- usually on newer more valuable boats -- who might complain but can easily afford the increase.

 

Is this really "fair", or does it actually amount to "social cleansing" of the canals by driving poorer boaters away -- who may have lived on and contributed to the canals for many years -- via big license fee increases, and replacing them with "shiny boaters"?

 

If you don't think that the license fee should vary with "wealth of boater/value of boat" then in reality this is what you are condoning. Do you think this is a good thing or not?

 

On the second point, yeah that sounds great -- except in reality hardly anyone does it, the sum brought in to CART is tiny, and it doesn't solve the problem described above... 😞

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4 hours ago, IanD said:

 

It could certainly be much better but this needs a lot more money,

 

Or the money they do have better managed.
For example some of the recent big cost failures and short term stoppages could have been avoided. Toddbrook is an example. I'm confident that better maintenance wouldn't have cost £16m and avoided evacuating a town and bringing in the RAF. Even with Figure of Three the warning signs were there. The towpath was washed out several times in years preceding 2020. Had the wash walls and bridges along the upper Calder been maintained the huge cost of repairs following the 2015 flood would have been lower. What about the theory that if the inside bend on the Aire and Calder had been dredged the returning commercial vessels wouldn't have needed to turn so close to the outside wall causing the culvert collapse? Take a look at the nearby A&C banks now, slippage caused by lowering the water level? Maybe another breach in the making and all for the sake of a bit of dredging.

 

It's the wait until it's completely f**ked policy that causes the majority of stoppages. Why wait for contractors when there are bank staff frustrated because they aren't allowed to make even small repairs. Dewsbury double top lock is an example where the offside hydraulic required a cheap valve replacement for years yet the local locky told me he could have easily fixed it himself. Then there's the both paddles broken situation - why fix just one? Surely it's cheaper to fix both at the same time rather than requiring another visit and another stoppage - same cost overall. Watford Locks are another good example. Three weeks stoppage to bodge a heel post. Had the bodge plate been added before the post completely rotted through,  same cost - no stoppage. And then there's those bloody blue signs grrrrr!

 

Yes increase license fees (length x width seems fair to me) but don't waste the extra on poor management practice.

 

 

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10 minutes ago, IanD said:

 and it doesn't solve the problem described above... 😞

Is that LadyG’s problem above or the problem that has taken this post way off course with a few just discussing it amongst themselves? I’m sure you’ve all discussed this before on licence increase posts and CaRT financing posts, maybe start another one before everyone forgets about LadyG’s dilemma, which is more entertaining 😞

Edited by PD1964
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22 minutes ago, Midnight said:

 

Or the money they do have better managed.
For example some of the recent big cost failures and short term stoppages could have been avoided. Toddbrook is an example. I'm confident that better maintenance wouldn't have cost £16m and avoided evacuating a town and bringing in the RAF. Even with Figure of Three the warning signs were there. The towpath was washed out several times in years preceding 2020. Had the wash walls and bridges along the upper Calder been maintained the huge cost of repairs following the 2015 flood would have been lower. What about the theory that if the inside bend on the Aire and Calder had been dredged the returning commercial vessels wouldn't have needed to turn so close to the outside wall causing the culvert collapse? Take a look at the nearby A&C banks now, slippage caused by lowering the water level? Maybe another breach in the making and all for the sake of a bit of dredging.

 

It's the wait until it's completely f**ked policy that causes the majority of stoppages. Why wait for contractors when there are bank staff frustrated because they aren't allowed to make even small repairs. Dewsbury double top lock is an example where the offside hydraulic required a cheap valve replacement for years yet the local locky told me he could have easily fixed it himself. Then there's the both paddles broken situation - why fix just one? Surely it's cheaper to fix both at the same time rather than requiring another visit and another stoppage - same cost overall. Watford Locks are another good example. Three weeks stoppage to bodge a heel post. Had the bodge plate been added before the post completely rotted through,  same cost - no stoppage. And then there's those bloody blue signs grrrrr!

 

Yes increase license fees (length x width seems fair to me) but don't waste the extra on poor management practice.

 

 

The problem is that lack of money directly leads to the lack of maintenance that causes failures/closures, because regular inspections and fixes cost money and needs people. Allowing people who might be able to fix a problem but are not officially qualified to do it sounds great, until somebody who doesn't know what they're doing screws it up. It's a difficult hole to dig yourself out of once you're in it, which CART are.

 

It's easy in hindsight to say "CART should have seen Toddbrook coming", but to do this they would have to have spent a lot more money doing regular and in-depth reservoir inspections across the entire system, for which they had neither the people or the money -- and to avoid a problem which had very rarely happened before. Then they'd probably have been slagged off for wasting money doing pointless inspections by the same people who go on about efficiency and ineffectiove management...

 

Everyone always says "don't waste money, spend it more efficiently" but it's not always as easy as it sounds to actually do (but it's easy for people to say should be done), and experience across many industries shows that "efficiency improvements" can't make up for the size of funding shortfall that CART has (to pull back the maintenance backlog) -- this was estimated at £100M per year in a review quite some time ago (does anyone have the details?) and is probably bigger by now.

 

If by "poor management practice" you mean "bad planning and execution of repairs" then this could perhaps be improved -- but again it's easy to criticise when you're not the one who actually has to do it. I'm pretty sure that there isn't an army of CART managers trying hard to dream up new ways to waste scarce funding, however some people might think it looks, but I suspect their hands are tied by things like available personnel and equipment and the costs of subcontracting work to third parties.

 

Lots of boaters hate the blue signs and think they're pointless (and some undoubtedly are...), but as the recent CART presentation pointed out they need to get support/involvement for the canals from the general public (not 35000 boaters) if the government is to carry on funding them, and it's the general public that the blue signs are aimed at not boaters.

Edited by IanD
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Just now, Alan de Enfield said:

 

I posted it on the forum a few days ago - It was a KPMG report for the 'valuation' and review of the viability of C&RT's plans.

 

 

586258347_Screenshot(295).png.2f02ffb512ff6c6be0ef773b50facf6c.png

Thanks Alan but that's just the cover page -- do you have the details I referred to?

 

Was this the report which referred to the cost of fixing the maintenance backlog, I thought that was earlier than 2012?

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3 minutes ago, IanD said:

Thanks Alan but that's just the cover page -- do you have the details I referred to?

 

Was this the report which referred to the cost of fixing the maintenance backlog, I thought that was earlier than 2012?

 

Yes I have it and posted the extracts / pages re maintenance backlogs a few days ago.

It was a finacial justificatioin for the founding of C&RT in 2012.

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1 minute ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

I agree that even by our low standards this is impressive thread drift.

 

@LadyG is going to be sorted in the fairly near future.  At least two and possibly three forumites are going to get her boat through the tunnel and maybe even up to the boatyard in a few days time.

 

The attempted repair to her boat didn't work so I'm going to advise her how to get it properly fixed for less than 10% of what RCR quoted her originally.  She is getting the usual flack from the usual misogynists and also from the militant wing of the sisterhood, but she has been doing exactly the right thing for a couple of months now.

 

She's not wrong to wait.  Yes, it could have been a 2 day job in November and done then, but a mixture of a busy local yard doing other work, being trapped between two unplanned stoppages and CRT being kept informed means it has run on over the Christmas period.  She's not going to be able to go far even when it's fixed for quite a few months.

 

 

 

Yeah, that happens sometimes -- at least the discussion hasn't descended into name-calling and insults, and there are some good points being made on all sides... 😉

1 minute ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Yes I have it and posted the extracts / pages re maintenance backlogs a few days ago.

It was a finacial justificatioin for the founding of C&RT in 2012.

So to keep it brief, what was the relevent number?

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1 minute ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Heh.  This thread started out with name calling and insults!

And it seems to have calmed down -- I meant the discussion drift about license fees, obviously 😉 

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36 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

Depends on your definition of "fair". Boaters at the moment have presumably planned their income/lifestyle/outgoings allowing for the current/historical levels of license fees.

 

Now say the fees have to increase significantly, say by 50% (or more?) across the board, which seems to be what is needed to get the canals back into a reasonable state of repair -- assuming CART can find similar increases from their other money sources.

 

This will undoubtedly cause problems for the less well-off boaters -- usually on older less valuable boats -- who are just keeping their financial heads above water, and will undoubtedly drive some of them off the canals for good. This will not cause a problem for better-off boaters -- usually on newer more valuable boats -- who might complain but can easily afford the increase.

 

Is this really "fair", or does it actually amount to "social cleansing" of the canals by driving poorer boaters away -- who may have lived on and contributed to the canals for many years -- via big license fee increases, and replacing them with "shiny boaters"?

 

If you don't think that the license fee should vary with "wealth of boater/value of boat" then in reality this is what you are condoning. Do you think this is a good thing or not?

 

On the second point, yeah that sounds great -- except in reality hardly anyone does it, the sum brought in to CART is tiny, and it doesn't solve the problem described above... 😞

No let’s not make up random numbers like 50% because that is very unfair.
Let’s stick with the rate of inflation. 
We ought to do everything to keep the license low and affordable to all. 
 

on your last point, no it’s not going to save the system on its own but it helps
of course the sum is going to be tiny if no one is putting in, but if those who keep banging on how the license is so cheap and want to pay more could begin by getting their cheque books out it’d help. 
 

CRT long ago realised boating licenses alone will never keep the system going

They have to find the money from elsewhere too, and seem pretty good at it. 
They’re  just shyte at managing the money.  

 

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59 minutes ago, IanD said:

So to keep it brief, what was the relevent number?

 

In 2004 BW assessed the costs to maintain a 'steady state' of keeping the infrastructure in the condition it was in 2004.

Between 2004 an 2012 BW annual spend was ~82% of the forecast 'steady state' requirement, showing a compound decline in condition every year.

 

C&RTs bugetary plans for 2012 to 2026 was to increase the spend to 92% of 'steady state' required expenditure.

(ie falling further and further behind year on year).

 

Condition of C&RTs assets are grouped in A, B, C, D, or E (with E being virtually unusable)

 

C&RTs 2012-2026 plans forecast a continued increase in assets falling down to the D category to ~21% by 2021.

 

Screenshot (841).png

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You will no doubt note that C&RTs planned income from Charity giving was downrated by 25% to be prudent as it was considered too optimistic. As it transpires C&RTs charity income has actually been a negative number, for the past 6-7 years with the cost of generating the income being some £5 million more than the income generated.

That has obviously affected their overall income and meant that they were not able to even reach their target of 92% expenditure to retain 'steady state' and the 'assests are now even worse than planned.

 

It was also highlighted that C&RTs 'emergency contingency fund' of £2 million to cope with a major breach, resevoir collapse, reduced income etc was insufficient to meet the likely costs.

Note : THE TRUSTEES CONSIDER THE CHANCE OF A MAJOR BREACH OR ASSET FAILURE OCCURING IS LOW.

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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On 16/11/2021 at 13:56, Joe Bourke said:

Jo,

I have spoken to the previous owner of your boat.  The pre-sale survey highlighted a worn prop shaft bearing. A new one was fitted.  A welder chappie cut the rudder stock above the rudder blade to remove the rudder and re-welded it afterwards. That is probably what has failed. 

 

This is not the way it should have been done, that's the summation. 

Its not fit for purpose. 

 

Edited by LadyG
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55 minutes ago, LadyG said:

 

This is not the way it should have been done, that's the summation. 

Its not fit for purpose. 

 

 

Maybe so Jo,  but that joint breaking might have saved your boat from sinking. A blessing in disguise? 

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On 05/01/2022 at 00:10, dmr said:

 

I suspect most old boaters with many years experience would not see a crisis at all but be impressed by how well maintained the canals are.

Last summer we went from the Rochdale summit to Lechlade and back. We had two minor delays on the South Oxford whilst CRT came to sort out lock problems, and a really grim couple of days coming up the Rochdale due to lack of water. Only once did I have to dive into my toolbox (to get through a stubborn swingbridge). Its 200 years old, its not a theme park (yet), its full of boaters who are no longer self sufficient and have unrealistic expectations of customer service, it could be much better, but it works.

 

Indeed. Whilst the condition of the canals has deteriorated from their peak in the early 90's, they are still in much better condition than when I started boating in the early 70's.

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17 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

Indeed. Whilst the condition of the canals has deteriorated from their peak in the early 90's, they are still in much better condition than when I started boating in the early 70's.

But for how much longer given the current rate of decline?

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22 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

Indeed. Whilst the condition of the canals has deteriorated from their peak in the early 90's, they are still in much better condition than when I started boating in the early 70's.

 

We were bow hauling a bit of the Rochdale and I am sure the volunteer helping us (a very long term boater) smiled and said "its just like the old days".

 

It is going slowly downhill and it was sad to see the South Oxford looking a bit neglected as that's usually a well kept waterway, but its not really a crisis. I am concerned that cycling will divert a lot of resources (without putting any money in) and that climate change is going to cause some huge expenses.

 

I think that rather than CRT trying to raise all of the money to maintain things that it would be reasonable for the government to take responsibilty for funding  major infrastructure such as reservoirs, and bigger bridges and embankments, but I think CRT asked for this and got turned down.

 

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