The National Bargee Travellers Association has slammed plans to raise licence fees on canals like the Kennet and Avon

[magnetman]

Think of it like hotels. You go to a hotel and you stay for x days and are charged x amount. If you want to stay for twice as long you pay 2x (assuming a daily rate of x). If you then go to another hotel you start paying them. 

 

Whether you remain asleep at all times during your stay or become involved in complex gymnastics is irrelevant. You pay according to how long you are in the hotel. 

[IanD]

2 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Of course it would work for CMers that is the whole point! 

 

You pay per day for being on the canal. 

 

The 95 act can be used to deal with people who persistently overstay as it can be already used for this.

 

My toll would be for time spent in the zone not based on precise location. 

 

As for big brother everyone is getting used to it. ANPR cameras everywhere you drive, car parks etc. 

 

 

If you don't cross zone boundaries to trigger a charge then what's the point of the zones?

 

ANPR works for cars because of the legal requirement to have a large ANPR-compatible numberplate front and back -- good luck with getting this pushed through for boats 🙂

 

And good luck with convincing boaters to fit GPS trackers to their boats... 😉

 

No matter how many tweaks you come up with, tolls based on tracking usage are simply impractical for the canals, if for no other reason that there are far too few boat movements to pay for it -- the situation is simply not comparable with cars, just like it isn't with supertankers.

2 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Think of it like hotels. You go to a hotel and you stay for x days and are charged x amount. If you want to stay for twice as long you pay 2x (assuming a daily rate of x). If you then go to another hotel you start paying them. 

 

Whether you remain asleep at all times during your stay or become involved in complex gymnastics is irrelevant. You pay according to how long you are in the hotel. 

 

Which is just charging per day, which doesn't need any boat tracking -- and is exactly what the proposed CC surcharge is... 😉

[magnetman]

So if a boat passes ISIS lock they are automatically charged a daily rate until they pass Napton Bottom lock, for example. Doesn't matter what they do during this time but the maximum stay in a zone would be the 2 weeks.

 

Link the toll zones to the 14 day 'satisfy the bored' rule and have variable pricing according to demand. Keep the boats moving. 

 

 

[Higgs]

10 minutes ago, IanD said:

The problem with this approach is that it would be far more divisive than almost anything else that has been suggested... 😞 

 

And to put it simply, why should law-breakers be allowed to continue getting away with it in future just because they were in the past? This applies to very few other ares, why should it apply to the canals?

 

I agree that CART made a rod for their own back with the "think of the kids" exception -- which is clearly against their own definition of what CC is! -- when they buckled under protests from the NBTA and friends. But that still doesn't make it right, or even sensible... 😉

 

We're all going to be saved - we've got Heath Robinson on the job. ^^

 

 

 

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Higgs

[magnetman]

The reason tolls would be useful for revenue generation is because you could vary the charge according to how many people want to use the area. For example why should a mooring in Camden be the same effective price as a mooring in Rugby? 

[IanD]

19 minutes ago, Midnight said:

 

Previous year's sightings?

 

So why doesn't this work and stop the CMers (or CC abusers) today?

 

Because it needs detailed recordkeeping and far more spotters than CART have -- and this is not affordable.

 

Realistically anything that needs any kind of regular/continuing on-the-ground checking is not going to work for CART, they need a license fee structure which is set by things which can be easily verified and checked with no effort except when the fee is paid.

 

Charging by boat size (or age) and CC/home mooring status fall into this category since CART already have most or all of the information. Charging by distance/lock use or location (like for woodburners...) doesn't.

Edited March 13, 2023 by IanD

[Allan(nb Albert)]

6 minutes ago, magnetman said:

There was a CRT or BW executive who was heard using this term to describe sone boaters. I forget who it was. It was some yars ago and caused some amusement as it seemed to be a window into the real world of the navigation authority. 

 

 

This was Matthew Symonds outside a nightclub in Bristol when someone asked him how he liked his new job. It was called gitgate at the time.

 

[Midnight]

3 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

So why doesn't this work and stop the CMers (or CC abusers) today?

 

Because it needs detailed recordkeeping and far more spotters than CART have -- and this is not affordable.

 

Realistically anything that needs any kind of regular/continuing on-the-ground checking is not going to work for CART, they need a license fee structure which is set be things which can be easily verified and checked with no ongoing effort except when the fee is paid.

 

Charging by boat size (or age) and CC/home mooring status fall into this category since CART already have most or all of the information. Charging by distance/lock use or location (like for woodburners...) doesn't.

 

Agreed up to a point. If C&RT raise an additionai £6m from CC licenses  C&RT licenses with no home mooring declaration, do they not intend to spend some of that on managing CMer's i.e. additional enforcement or will they just do nothing except spend the money on the usual non-essentials?

[Higgs]

I still haven't heard any arguments for the reduction of licence fees for people that don't venture on to the canal. If there is an argument for people that use the canal a lot, there must be an opposite.

 

 

[IanD]

7 minutes ago, Midnight said:

 

Agreed up to a point. If C&RT raise an additionai £6m from CC licenses  C&RT licenses with no home mooring declaration, do they not intend to spend some of that on managing CMer's i.e. additional enforcement or will they just do nothing except spend the money on the usual non-essentials?

 

Like paddle and lock repairs/replacement? 😉

 

If they add a CC surcharge then surely they'll need less enforcement, not more? Right now the enforcement is partly needed -- at least in theory, though it doesn't seem to work very well in practice -- to detect CMers who break the rules just to get cheap moorings (which costs CART some revenue). With a surcharge, CART will care less about whether you're a "real CCer" or a "CMer" because they get the extra money either way. In fact you might even think they'd be more relaxed about CMers because they'd get more money from them than boats with home moorings... 😉

Edited March 13, 2023 by IanD
typos

[Higgs]

16 minutes ago, Midnight said:

 

Agreed up to a point. If C&RT raise an additionai £6m from CC licenses  C&RT licenses with no home mooring declaration, do they not intend to spend some of that on managing CMer's i.e. additional enforcement or will they just do nothing except spend the money on the usual non-essentials?

 

I would hope they would spend it all on keeping home moorers moored up. So they could feel extra smug. Especially the one whose crate hasn't been launched yet. 

 

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Higgs

[Arthur Marshall]

2 hours ago, IanD said:

 

Like paddle and lock repairs/replacement? 😉

 

If they add a CC surcharge then surely they'll need less enforcement, not more? Right now the enforcement is partly needed -- at least in theory, though it doesn't seem to work very well in practice -- to detect CMers who break the rules just to get cheap moorings (which costs CART some revenue). With a surcharge, CART will care less about whether you're a "real CCer" or a "CMer" because they get the extra money either way. In fact you might even think they'd be more relaxed about CMers because they'd get more money from them than boats with home moorings... 😉

The real problem with continuous moorers is that they have no identification. There's nothing CRT can do about them unless they have the facility simply to tow away and scrap any boat without a number showing, which they haven't. That situation will expand if the CC fee goes up much. Of course, the easy alternative is just to use someone else's number, like they do with cars.

I was surprised to find that, for example, the Harecastle tunnel blokes let unlicensed and unidentified boats through. But what else can they do? They surely don't get paid enough to act as enforcement officers, and they aren't even employed by CRT any more.

[Cheshire cat]

2 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

I was surprised to find that, for example, the Harecastle tunnel blokes let unlicensed and unidentified boats through. But what else can they do? They surely don't get paid enough to act as enforcement officers, and they aren't even employed by CRT any more.

 

Do they still record the licence numbers of boats that do display them? I don't recall having any interaction with them last time I went through. 

[IanD]

7 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

The real problem with continuous moorers is that they have no identification. There's nothing CRT can do about them unless they have the facility simply to tow away and scrap any boat without a number showing, which they haven't. That situation will expand if the CC fee goes up much. Of course, the easy alternative is just to use someone else's number, like they do with cars.

I was surprised to find that, for example, the Harecastle tunnel blokes let unlicensed and unidentified boats through. But what else can they do? They surely don't get paid enough to act as enforcement officers, and they aren't even employed by CRT any more.

If the CMers have a license but no identification on the boat then there's no problem. If they don't have a license then that's a separate problem entirely, nothing to do with changes to the license fee -- the problem is detection of license evasion and enforcement on offenders. Using someone else's number is the same issue as with cars -- cross-check the number with the recorded description (colour/size?) and last logged location of the boat, if it belongs to a red 40' boat last seen in Birmingham and it's now on a blue 70' boat in London then suspicion should be aroused.

 

One obvious solution to reduce license evasion would be to bring back the requirement to display the license number on boats, I don't understand why this requirement was ever removed since without it how can they tell whether a boat -- possibly with no name to identify it -- is licensed or not?

Edited March 13, 2023 by IanD

[Higgs]

Jobsworths of the world unite. ^^

 

 

[ditchcrawler]

7 minutes ago, IanD said:

If the CMers have a license but no identification on the boat then there's no problem. If they don't have a license then that's a separate problem entirely, nothing to do with changes to the license fee -- the problem is detection of license evasion and enforcement on offenders. Using someone else's number is the same issue as with cars -- cross-check the number with the recorded description (colour/size?) and last logged location of the boat, if it belongs to a red 40' boat last seen in Birmingham and it's now on a blue 70' boat in London then suspicion should be aroused.

 

One obvious solution to reduce license evasion would be to bring back the requirement to display the license number on boats, I don't understand why this requirement was ever removed since without it how can they tell whether a boat -- possibly with no name to identify it -- is licensed or not?

If you dont licence your new boat, dont put a name or number on it and are careful who you talk to and what you say it will take CRT years to catch up with you, especially if you move about a bit.

[enigmatic]

2 hours ago, Higgs said:

I still haven't heard any arguments for the reduction of licence fees for people that don't venture on to the canal. If there is an argument for people that use the canal a lot, there must be an opposite.

 

 

The CRT wants more money, not less.

[Higgs]

1 minute ago, enigmatic said:

 

The CRT wants more money, not less.

 

That has never been in dispute. 

 

 

[Steilsteven]

6 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

 

The CRT wants more money, not less.

If they don't venture onto the canal they don't need a license, unless CRT insists they do.

Reply actually intended for Higgs.

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Steilsteven

[IanD]

9 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

If you dont licence your new boat, dont put a name or number on it and are careful who you talk to and what you say it will take CRT years to catch up with you, especially if you move about a bit.

But is that just because not displaying a license number isn't a "red flag" any more?

[Steilsteven]

1 minute ago, IanD said:

But is that just because not displaying a license number isn't a "red flag" any more?

No it's because it makes the owner untraceable 

 

[Alan de Enfield]

20 minutes ago, IanD said:

One obvious solution to reduce license evasion would be to bring back the requirement to display the license number on boats, I don't understand why this requirement was ever removed since without it how can they tell whether a boat -- possibly with no name to identify it -- is licensed or not?

 

And yet it is still a requirement in the 2022 T&Cs that you agree to before the issuing of the licence.

 

10.1. Each boat registered for use on Our Waterways is given a unique index number that is linked to the Licence. You must display the Boat’s name, index number and the Licence on both sides of the Boat so that they are always easily visible from the towpath or on the Waterway

[Higgs]

17 minutes ago, Steilsteven said:

If they don't venture onto the canal they don't need a license, unless CRT insists they do.

Reply actually intended for Higgs.

 

 

And CRT can only insist, if a boat is on their waterway. Which is where a licence is a legal requirement. Anywhere else, and it isn't. Anywhere else, and it's an expensive piece of toilet paper. 

 

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Higgs

[peterboat]

3 hours ago, magnetman said:

The zones would be much bigger than 10 miles. I could see Oxford to Napton being one zone. A boat either is there or it isn't. It will have passed one end to get it and if it has not exited the other end then it gets charged per day. 

 

If boat goes off water onto private property or marina they produce proof in the form of invoice for mooring or lifting. 

 

Simple. You could easily monitor movement through the start and end points with cameras. 

 

They do it on the roads for congestion charging. 

 

It would cost but it might keep traffic moving and bring in more money for the navigation authority which seems to be an important point. 

 

I know the canals are very quaint and all that but some people theorise that they are at risk due to funding problems.

 

I think it would be nice if they are retained for future generations to enjoy. Young people these days are always using convenient smart phone apps to do anything so a camera gantry across the entrance to a lock really isn't going to be a big issue compared with the possibility of actually losing a functioning canal network. 

 

 

 

Andrew why would they bother? You have been boating for years, you know that BW/CRT always take the easy route so it won't change expect a good rogering shortly from them

[Allan(nb Albert)]

30 minutes ago, IanD said:

If the CMers have a license but no identification on the boat then there's no problem. If they don't have a license then that's a separate problem entirely, nothing to do with changes to the license fee -- the problem is detection of license evasion and enforcement on offenders. Using someone else's number is the same issue as with cars -- cross-check the number with the recorded description (colour/size?) and last logged location of the boat, if it belongs to a red 40' boat last seen in Birmingham and it's now on a blue 70' boat in London then suspicion should be aroused.

 

One obvious solution to reduce license evasion would be to bring back the requirement to display the license number on boats, I don't understand why this requirement was ever removed since without it how can they tell whether a boat -- possibly with no name to identify it -- is licensed or not?

The requirement to display a licence is enshrined in law and has never been repealed.

The same goes for registration.

The problem with the first is that CRT said it was no longer a requirement because they could check via registration.

 

The problem with the second is that they don't take immeadiate action.

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Allan(nb Albert)