The Why Bother Brigade

[Phoenix_V]

12 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

I thought that EA had a role.

nothing to do with navigation just weirs and drainage same as Lea and Stort which are crt rivers

1 hour ago, IanD said:

 

You said "it is run far more efficiently than CRT" and then followed that up with "Notwithstanding that canals generally cost more to run than river navigations".

 

If CRT have (for example) 5x as much maintenance to do and need (for example) 5x as much money to do it, they're not less efficient, they just have 5x more work to do. If they have 10x as much work to do and manage with 5x the money they're *more* efficient, not less.

 

So please give some facts to back up your "far more efficient" claim, otherwise you're just indulging in the usual CRT-bashing... 🙂

Ah so that is your  gripe.

Don't have any figures but many years of cruising said navigations and observing how they are run have given me an opinion. The figures are freely available from the independants but I don't know if crt produce separate figures for river navigation costs. I could make a freedom of information request but that would only remove more money from the front line - perhaps Narrowboat Albert has some.

Edited March 31, 2023 by Phoenix_V

[Paul C]

37 minutes ago, Phoenix_V said:

 

Don't have any figures 

 

Fair enough, if you just feel that CRT are more inefficient, its okay to have an opinion and own it.

[Phoenix_V]

2 hours ago, Paul C said:

 

Fair enough, if you just feel that CRT are more inefficient, its okay to have an opinion and own it.

opinion based on hard experience would be interested and suprised to learn whether anyone has come to a different conclusion

[Alan de Enfield]

19 minutes ago, Phoenix_V said:

opinion based on hard experience would be interested and suprised to learn whether anyone has come to a different conclusion

 

My 40 years of canal experience suggest that we had a nicely improving track until the mid / late 1990s when it began to plateau, by the eary 2000s there were definite signs of  going backwards, and that gradually got worse and worse, by 2012, and with C&RT inheriting a failing 'adventure park' the snowball was rolling down the mountain at an ever increasing pace, we left C&RT waters in October 2019 as life was getting just to complicated and difficult, you could not plan an extended trip and expect to get back.

 

It become a bit like a trip into the outback - if you want to go out into the wilds take a Landrover,if you want to come back take a Toyota Land Cruiser

 

If you want to cruise the canals go on C&RT waters, but if you want to be able to get back home, use the EA, other navigation authority waters, or even go 'coastal'.

[Arthur Marshall]

41 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

My 40 years of canal experience suggest that we had a nicely improving track until the mid / late 1990s when it began to plateau, by the eary 2000s there were definite signs of  going backwards, and that gradually got worse and worse, by 2012, and with C&RT inheriting a failing 'adventure park' the snowball was rolling down the mountain at an ever increasing pace, we left C&RT waters in October 2019 as life was getting just to complicated and difficult, you could not plan an extended trip and expect to get back.

 

It become a bit like a trip into the outback - if you want to go out into the wilds take a Landrover,if you want to come back take a Toyota Land Cruiser

 

If you want to cruise the canals go on C&RT waters, but if you want to be able to get back home, use the EA, other navigation authority waters, or even go 'coastal'.

All sadly true.

I'm not even going to attempt a summer cruise this year. The race to get home last year was ridiculous, especially at the end when I got stuck at the south end of the Harecastle for three days because the level was too low to get through the damn thing.

[TheBiscuits]

On 29/03/2023 at 21:18, Dav and Pen said:

the upper Avon is still an independent waterway.

 

While we are discussing the Avon Navigation Trust - who I like immensely having met most of their senior management team out on the river on boats! - it's interesting to compare licence fees.

 

12 month licence for a 57 ft narrowboat, prepay discount applied.

 

ANT : 47 Miles of waterway : £654 : £13.91 / mile. 

Residential boats attract an extra fee.

 

CRT : ~2000 Miles of waterway : £1184 : £0.59 / mile.

No extra charge for residential.

 

I wonder if this makes it easier or harder for ANT to fund things ...

 

[enigmatic]

4 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

While we are discussing the Avon Navigation Trust - who I like immensely having met most of their senior management team out on the river on boats! - it's interesting to compare licence fees.

 

12 month licence for a 57 ft narrowboat, prepay discount applied.

 

ANT : 47 Miles of waterway : £654 : £13.91 / mile. 

Residential boats attract an extra fee.

 

CRT : ~2000 Miles of waterway : £1184 : £0.59 / mile.

No extra charge for residential.

 

I wonder if this makes it easier or harder for ANT to fund things ...

 

 

I wonder whether that gap narrows or widens when licensed boats per mile is taken into account?

 

Think it's really very difficult to compare the efficiency of people managing very different sets of navigations. As well as 2000 miles of towpath and artificial bank , CRT has to deal with its locks nearly all being heritage structures built from crumbly masonry with wooden gates, and even crumblier bridges, channels which were dug to be just deep enough (and only in the middle) before silt and scrap accumulated, and boaters that expect to be able to moor almost everywhere and have an Elsan point every few miles.

 

Not really a surprise that, say, the Nene's twentieth century concrete and steel locks and virtually nonexistent facilities look in relatively good nick, even if you never see anyone working on them.

[TheBiscuits]

1 hour ago, enigmatic said:

I wonder whether that gap narrows or widens when licensed boats per mile is taken into account

 

The only figures for ANT boats I can find are the 2008 AINA report.

 

https://aina.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Boatnumbers0909.pdf

 

That gives ~30,000 (15 per mile) for BW and ~1600 (34 per mile) for ANT.

 

I suspect there are now more than this on the Warwickshire Avon, because new marinas have been built since then.

 

Anyone got more recent numbers?

 

 

Edited April 1, 2023 by TheBiscuits
Add a bit

[Rambling Boater]

4 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

While we are discussing the Avon Navigation Trust - who I like immensely having met most of their senior management team out on the river on boats! - it's interesting to compare licence fees.

 

12 month licence for a 57 ft narrowboat, prepay discount applied.

 

ANT : 47 Miles of waterway : £654 : £13.91 / mile. 

Residential boats attract an extra fee.

 

CRT : ~2000 Miles of waterway : £1184 : £0.59 / mile.

No extra charge for residential.

 

I wonder if this makes it easier or harder for ANT to fund things ...

 

 

I suppose it depends what they spend their income on and how much they rely on volunteers.

 

C&RT have lots of staff and towpath to maintain. ANT only have a few paid staff and are very reliant on volunteers.

 

C&RT annual income = £180 million

(about £90,000 per mile)

 

ANT annual income (old figures)

£0.557 million

(about £12,000 per mile)

 

[please correct me if those figures are wrong]

 

C&RT only get just over 10% of their income from boat licences. That's probably fair seeing as the vast majority of those who enjoy the canals are members of the public who do it from the towpath.

 

 

[Scholar Gypsy]

9 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

While we are discussing the Avon Navigation Trust - who I like immensely having met most of their senior management team out on the river on boats! - it's interesting to compare licence fees.

 

12 month licence for a 57 ft narrowboat, prepay discount applied.

 

ANT : 47 Miles of waterway : £654 : £13.91 / mile. 

Residential boats attract an extra fee.

 

CRT : ~2000 Miles of waterway : £1184 : £0.59 / mile.

No extra charge for residential.

 

I wonder if this makes it easier or harder for ANT to fund things ...

 

This is not a sensible comparison, in terms of operating efficiency!

[magnetman]

One wonders if people treat the waterway with more respect due to paying more money to use it. 

 

River Wey is another interesting one. Very short and pleasant little canalised river. 

 

National Trust but I don't know if they also get some .gov funding as well. 

 

 

[MtB]

16 minutes ago, magnetman said:

National Trust but I don't know if they also get some .gov funding as well. 

 

 

I had no idea the Wey was managed by a hard right political party from the 1970s! 

 

 

[Mike Todd]

19 hours ago, Phoenix_V said:

nothing to do with navigation just weirs and drainage same as Lea and Stort which are crt rivers

Ah so that is your  gripe.

Don't have any figures but many years of cruising said navigations and observing how they are run have given me an opinion. The figures are freely available from the independants but I don't know if crt produce separate figures for river navigation costs. I could make a freedom of information request but that would only remove more money from the front line - perhaps Narrowboat Albert has some.

So they do get some of the costs of maintaining the river from the public purse.

[Allan(nb Albert)]

4 hours ago, Mike Todd said:

So they do get some of the costs of maintaining the river from the public purse.

No. See Charity Commission website -

https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/244951

[Mike Todd]

2 hours ago, Allan(nb Albert) said:

No. See Charity Commission website -

https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/244951

I was not implying that the Trust received any cash but they do get benefit from EA work, without which the cost if najnrsing the navigation would be much higher. One of the complications if the EA habitations were to be transferred to CaRT.

[David Mack]

7 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

I was not implying that the Trust received any cash but they do get benefit from EA work, without which the cost if najnrsing the navigation would be much higher.

Which means fair comparisons of the 'efficiency' of CRT and independent navigation authorities cannot really be made.

[Mike Todd]

1 minute ago, David Mack said:

Which means fair comparisons of the 'efficiency' of CRT and independent navigation authorities cannot really be made.

Which is exactly what I was, perhaps too obliquely for some, to say.

[Phoenix_V]

11 hours ago, David Mack said:

Which means fair comparisons of the 'efficiency' of CRT and independent navigation authorities cannot really be made.

See my previous comment, the EA deal with weirs and flood relief on the crt Lea and Stort so if the figures were made public a  fair comparison could easily be made

[Tim Lewis]

7 hours ago, Phoenix_V said:

See my previous comment, the EA deal with weirs and flood relief on the crt Lea and Stort so if the figures were made public a  fair comparison could easily be made

One of the Locks on the River Lea, Ware, is an EA lock!

Edited April 2, 2023 by Tim Lewis

[Phoenix_V]

 

[Tim Lewis]

On 30/03/2023 at 09:13, David Mack said:

Ernest Marples was managing director of contractor Marples Ridgeway and owned 80% of the shares in the company. On becoming Minister of Transport he sold those shares to his wife.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Marples

 

 

Ernest Marples at Little Venice 1964

Edited April 7, 2023 by Tim Lewis

[Midnight]

On 31/03/2023 at 22:12, Phoenix_V said:

opinion based on hard experience would be interested and suprised to learn whether anyone has come to a different conclusion

Only IanD who doesn't have a boat - YET! - a few weeks hire a year don't count
We are about to set off  for our summer cruise wondering if we can actually escape from Yorkshire and if we do, will we be able to return. It's a lottery up here. C&RT in my opinion are a bag of sh*te. However I'm sure they are trying hard and with 31 current vacancies for staff things are sure to improve. Can't wait to see the contributions from the Senior Hydrologist Modeller, Heritage Advisor and IT Solutions Architect.

[IanD]

Sounds horribly familiar, doesn't it? 😞

 

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/network-rail-has-insufficient-funds-to-maintain-the-uks-railway-infrastructure-18-04-2023/

 

"A leaked presentation, seen by The Independent, says that the condition of crumbling infrastructure including tracks, bridges and earthworks is expected to worsen as Network Rail’s funding will not cover the rising costs.

This will increase delays and issues, reducing the reliability of the nation’s railways for customers. It follows in the wake of unions including RMT slamming central government for its “managed decline” of the national’s rail network."

Edited April 19, 2023 by IanD

[MtB]

I think its partly to do with the way we here in the UK insist on gold plating everything including maintenance of the canal and rail networks. A good example is that accommodation bridge in another thread that CRT spent £2m re-building. I'm quite certain another bridge that looked the same could have been built in a couple of months by a competent team of builders and bricklayers for perhaps 10% of that sum, given a free rein to just get on and build it.

 

But no, somebody somewhere insists on perfection in every aspect of the work so costs run away into the stratosphere, thus starving other projects of funds. Similar is probably happening on the rail network. IKB, Rennie et al won't have been working under such constraints.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by MtB

[IanD]

6 minutes ago, MtB said:

I think its partly to do with the way we here in the UK insist on gold plating everything including maintenance of the canal and rail networks. A good example is that accommodation bridge in another thread that CRT spent £2m re-building. I'm quite certain another bridge that looked the same could have been built in a couple of months by a competent team of builders and bricklayers for perhaps 10% of that sum, given a free rein to just get on and build it.

 

But no, somebody somewhere insists on perfection in every aspect of the work so costs run away into the stratosphere, thus starving other projects of funds. Similar is probably happening on the rail network. IKB, Rennie et al won't have been working under such constraints.

 

 

I agree that £2M on an accommodation bridge is ludicrous -- but if it was listed and had to replaced exactly like-for-like (which I believe was the case) what choice did CART have, break the law? Do we know if this came out of CART funds or was it an insurance job?

 

Whether "gold-plating" happens in other projects I don't know, I'd have thought it was in CART's interest to keep the costs down given their lack of funding, this isn't "cost-plus" with an unlimited budget -- do you actually have any evidence of this "gold-plating" happening (which would be inexcusable!), or are we just back to CART-bashing? 😉