Countryfile

[David Mack]

49 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

You won't need to, they'll just become unusable, like the north end of the T&M did two years ago. That had to be fixed because it's busy, but the ones that are almost unusable already just won't get done.

If that happens, then it won't be the least-used sections which close, it will be those with significant failures, wherever they are.

Boaters with longer memories will remember the early 80s when a number of tunnels were closed UFN (until further notice) cutting through routes on popular waterways. IIRC the list included Blisworth, Netherton, Saddington and Preston Brook. Eventually government was persuaded to provide some additional funding to sort the problems out, but that looks much less likely were the same situation to happen now.

[magpie patrick]

13 minutes ago, David Mack said:

If that happens, then it won't be the least-used sections which close, it will be those with significant failures, wherever they are.

Boaters with longer memories will remember the early 80s when a number of tunnels were closed UFN (until further notice) cutting through routes on popular waterways. IIRC the list included Blisworth, Netherton, Saddington and Preston Brook. Eventually government was persuaded to provide some additional funding to sort the problems out, but that looks much less likely were the same situation to happen now.

 And when UFN meant "years" not "we don't know but probably not very long"

 

The Bridgwater and Taunton Canal is probably the best (or worst) example. The wooden props in the Albert Street Cutting have become unsafe, and the canal closed though them, now for 2 or 3 years. This is probably one of the most popular bits of the canal both for walkers and boaters (albeit canoes) but the repairs have just never been done.  

[IanD]

1 hour ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Isn't a canals usage measured by lock cycles ?

 

Displaced boats on 'little used' canals could be dozens/hundreds of NBTA members, mind you, they'd probably be glad if a canal was 'closed' by C&RT as C&RTs rules would no longer apply, and, being sat on the bottom stops it wobbling about.

True, lock cycles is the measure I was thinking of.

 

I doubt somehow that there are loads of NBTA boats moored on canals like the HNC and Rochdale, far too remote and Northern... 😉 

[Ronaldo47]

At least we will still have the Llangollen due to it being also used to convey drinking water to the Midlands. I seem to recall that it was only maintained as a navigable waterway after WWII because a manager insisted that keeping it navigable was essential so that  maintenance craft could access the many sections with no road access. 

[IanD]

Meanwhile, I thought it was quite an accurate and well balanced programme -- it made clear what many of the issues with the canals are, where the funding comes from (or doesn't), and the boaters interviewed also had sensible attitudes to the license fee increases...

 

8 minutes ago, Ronaldo47 said:

At least we will still have the Llangollen due to it being also used to convey drinking water to the Midlands. I seem to recall that it was only maintained as a navigable waterway after WWII because a manager insisted that keeping it navigable was essential so that  maintenance craft could access the many sections with no road access. 

... until/unless something happens to it that would be horrendously expensive to fix, like a major failure at one of the aqueducts, and a pipe (e.g. inverted siphon) is much cheaper than repairing it... 😞 

 

If CART funds continue to fail to cover the required maintenance then the number of emergency stoppages is only going to carry on going up, especially as the Millennium-era restorations reach the end of their design lifetime -- and without more money I can't see what the alternative to closures is, however difficult this will be... 😞 

Edited March 4 by IanD

[magpie patrick]

36 minutes ago, IanD said:

If CART funds continue to fail to cover the required maintenance then the number of emergency stoppages is only going to carry on going up, especially as the Millennium-era restorations reach the end of their design lifetime -- and without more money I can't see what the alternative to closures is, however difficult this will be... 😞 

 This ^^^^^ 

 

We need to stop thinking that canal closures, even on busy routes, are unthinkable - if money is short, it will happen. 

 

I'd say the most vulnerable are big embankments and tunnels (aqueducts less so but they often have big embankments on their approaches) - followed not far behind by big cuttings. A large failure on one of these will close the canal indefinitely and almost without warning. 

 

Thinking about it I would add Marple locks - failure rate is one every few years at a couple of million quid every time.

 

I have reports on my shelves from the 50s and 60s that look at permanent closure of some through routes including Harecastle Tunnel 

 

Even though I used lock gates as an example, they are not actually the weak spot they seem, the limiting factor at the moment is the capacity to build them, certainly Bradley are working flat out, and I suspect Stanley Ferry are too, but capacity simply means waiting for new gates not them never being built.  

 

Another big problem is that reliability will be much reduced, and that is critical for the hire boat industry and canal side businesses dependent upon the leisure side of boating. Before maintenance was such an issue, we used to reckon as a rule of thumb that the leisure trade needed the canal to withstand the 1 in 10 year drought*, that is. so long as the failure rate was less than a 10% probability it would cope, if failure rate, any failure, starts to exceed 1 in 10, that is a 10% chance that holidays will be disrupted or cancelled, it will be very bad news. The public may be even more fickle now as there are more alternatives.

 

*This gave concern on the Rochdale where the water supply was only up to the 1 in 3 year drought. In practice usage has not been as forecast so this hasn't been the issue we thought it would be, and our understanding of water management and supply has improved so we were probably being unduly pessimistic 

[Arthur Marshall]

1 hour ago, IanD said:

😞 

If CART funds continue to fail to cover the required maintenance then the number of emergency stoppages is only going to carry on going up, especially as the Millennium-era restorations reach the end of their design lifetime -- and without more money I can't see what the alternative to closures is, however difficult this will be... 😞 

As they've been failing to cover the costs for years without anyone in authority appearing to care very much (and that includes BW and CRT, let alone DEFRA or anyone in any shade of politics), there is very little future for the system as a whole, let alone in part. Every chunk that gets remaindered means less interest in the rest of it.

Why some of the renovation societies are still getting excited about attempts to actually expand the system beats me.

[magpie patrick]

1 minute ago, Arthur Marshall said:

As they've been failing to cover the costs for years without anyone in authority appearing to care very much (and that includes BW and CRT,

 That isn't quite true, BW certainly did care and looked for ways to manage whilst spending less money*, aware of the bean counters at HMG - they also had the ability to go cap in hand if something did go badly wrong, and would get at least partially bailed out. CRT lost that option and have also now had their funding severely restricted

 

*whether their methods were effective is another matter. 

[IanD]

3 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

 This ^^^^^ 

 

We need to stop thinking that canal closures, even on busy routes, are unthinkable - if money is short, it will happen. 

 

I'd say the most vulnerable are big embankments and tunnels (aqueducts less so but they often have big embankments on their approaches) - followed not far behind by big cuttings. A large failure on one of these will close the canal indefinitely and almost without warning. 

 

Thinking about it I would add Marple locks - failure rate is one every few years at a couple of million quid every time.

 

I have reports on my shelves from the 50s and 60s that look at permanent closure of some through routes including Harecastle Tunnel 

 

Even though I used lock gates as an example, they are not actually the weak spot they seem, the limiting factor at the moment is the capacity to build them, certainly Bradley are working flat out, and I suspect Stanley Ferry are too, but capacity simply means waiting for new gates not them never being built.  

 

Another big problem is that reliability will be much reduced, and that is critical for the hire boat industry and canal side businesses dependent upon the leisure side of boating. Before maintenance was such an issue, we used to reckon as a rule of thumb that the leisure trade needed the canal to withstand the 1 in 10 year drought*, that is. so long as the failure rate was less than a 10% probability it would cope, if failure rate, any failure, starts to exceed 1 in 10, that is a 10% chance that holidays will be disrupted or cancelled, it will be very bad news. The public may be even more fickle now as there are more alternatives.

 

*This gave concern on the Rochdale where the water supply was only up to the 1 in 3 year drought. In practice usage has not been as forecast so this hasn't been the issue we thought it would be, and our understanding of water management and supply has improved so we were probably being unduly pessimistic 

 

The problem is that reliability has *already* got considerably worse, certainly in the last 15 years or so. Speaking from experience, before that you could plan a March-October holiday with pretty high confidence that there wouldn't be any unplanned stoppages and you could travel as planned, stoppages were mostly planned and in the winter. Nowadays this is not the case, quite a few of the trips I've done in recent years have needed route/plan changes due to stoppages, sometimes a complete rethink of which canal to go on.

 

It's not so bad if you're a leisurely liveaboard with plenty of time to spare and nowhere particular to go, but it can be very disruptive when you have a fixed timeslot booked months in advance with the aim of taking a particular route only to find out it's no longer possible -- and this *will* discourage hirers if it continues to get worse.

[magpie patrick]

Just to add, licence revenue (not the same thing as individual licence fees) would have to increase by 67% to replace the funding that will be lost - given that some give up this suggests fees would probably have to at least double to plug the gap 

[IanD]

10 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

 That isn't quite true, BW certainly did care and looked for ways to manage whilst spending less money*, aware of the bean counters at HMG - they also had the ability to go cap in hand if something did go badly wrong, and would get at least partially bailed out. CRT lost that option and have also now had their funding severely restricted

 

*whether their methods were effective is another matter. 

 

That's the whole point of privatisation (or de-publicisation in this case) as far as the government is concerned -- it get something off their books in the hope that the money will magically appear from elsewhere (the private sector? charities? magic money trees?), they don't have to pick up the tab if anything goes wrong because it's an SEP (Somebody Else's Problem), and they can blame whoever is now running it even if the fundamental problem is caused by the government e.g. by grant/funding cuts.

 

I mean, look how well that's worked for water, railways, social care, local councils -- and now canals... 😞 

Edited March 4 by IanD

[ditchcrawler]

2 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

At least we will still have the Llangollen due to it being also used to convey drinking water to the Midlands. I seem to recall that it was only maintained as a navigable waterway after WWII because a manager insisted that keeping it navigable was essential so that  maintenance craft could access the many sections with no road access. 

Do you think today anyone in the offices will remember that, they will just think the water will happily flow with a concrete dam at the head of each lock 

[PeterF]

Am I being optimistic if I think (fantasize) that the significant costs of reservoir upgrades and repairs over the past 4+ years since he Todbrook incident should diminish over coming years, releasing (hopefully) more cash for routine navigation maintenance.

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

3 minutes ago, PeterF said:

Am I being optimistic if I think (fantasize) that the significant costs of reservoir upgrades and repairs over the past 4+ years since he Todbrook incident should diminish over coming years, releasing (hopefully) more cash for routine navigation maintenance.

Who has been paying for Todbrook?

I assumed CRT’d have been able to grab some funding from somewhere for that. 

And do you remember Boris pledging to ‘make it right whatever the cost’ (or something similar). 

 

 

[Arthur Marshall]

39 minutes ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:

Who has been paying for Todbrook?

I assumed CRT’d have been able to grab some funding from somewhere for that. 

And do you remember Boris pledging to ‘make it right whatever the cost’ (or something similar). 

 

 

 I don't think you can rely on Boris pledges... and why should anyone bail CRT out when "Following the partial collapse in 2019, a government-ordered investigation into the incident concluded that poor design, maintenance failings and inspection oversights all contributed to the partial collapse of the Toddbrook reservoir dam." You can't blame CRT for the poor design, but you can for the rest of it.

Edited March 4 by Arthur Marshall

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

12 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

 I don't think you can rely on Boris pledges...

absolutely not,

 

but CRT must have had some extra funding from somewhere to deal with it?

I lost touch with the figures a long time ago but without funding from elsewhere I don’t know how CRT could afford to fix it?

 

if they can blag the extra cash when there are breaches in the canal surely they’ve found a hand out from somewhere to help with Todbrook?
 

[magpie patrick]

19 minutes ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:

but CRT must have had some extra funding from somewhere to deal with it?

I lost touch with the figures a long time ago but without funding from elsewhere I don’t know how CRT could afford to fix it?

 Others may know better but I don't know that CRT did get extra dosh - funding was given to businesses and residents for "uninsured losses" and "recovery" 

 

The failure was in 2019 and the works won't be completed until 2025, so the costs are spread over several years

 

 

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

Right a (very) quick and skimming google reveals initial costs were estimated at 15 or 16 million. 
narrowboat world reported this time last year the costs were going to be 37 million,

and I think in the initial few days there was maybe 2millionish raised by the local council and businesses. 
 

and initially there were arguments who were going to pay for the Chinook helicopters. 

[Allan(nb Albert)]

1 hour ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:

Who has been paying for Todbrook?

I assumed CRT’d have been able to grab some funding from somewhere for that. 

And do you remember Boris pledging to ‘make it right whatever the cost’ (or something similar). 

 

 

Cost estimates for Toddbrook have risen from an initial £10m to £37.6m. However, that figure is a year old so may have gone up again.

 

It should also be remembered that Toddbrook raised questions regarding safety of other reservoirs and, indeed, other structures.

 

Following the incident, CRT bypassed Defra and made a £200m + bid direct to the Treasury for extra money over a five year period. In effect this would have almost doubled government grant. The 2020 bid (actually a bid and a revised bid) was quietly rejected.

 

Has CaRT’s government bid for £220m extra funding failed?

 

As far as I can recall, CRT is footing the bill for almost everything related to Toddbrook and its wider implications.

 

BTW, the costs for Harthill (mentioned in the article) have risen from £5m to £10m.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 4 by Allan(nb Albert)

[Arthur Marshall]

1 hour ago, Allan(nb Albert) said:

Cost estimates for Toddbrook have risen from an initial £10m to £37.6m. However, that figure is a year old so may have gone up again.

 

It should also be remembered that Toddbrook raised questions regarding safety of other reservoirs and, indeed, other structures.

 

Following the incident, CRT bypassed Defra and made a £200m + bid direct to the Treasury for extra money over a five year period. In effect this would have almost doubled government grant. The 2020 bid (actually a bid and a revised bid) was quietly rejected.

 

Has CaRT’s government bid for £220m extra funding failed?

 

As far as I can recall, CRT is footing the bill for almost everything related to Toddbrook and its wider implications.

 

BTW, the costs for Harthill (mentioned in the article) have risen from £5m to £10m.

 

 

 

 

They appear to be funding the yacht club move too, which always seemed a bit unnecessary to me. Fix the reservoir, yes, but let the boys pay for their own damn club.

But this is what you get for skimping on maintenance, same as the T&M breach that flooded Northwich , which could have been avoided if most of the weir paddle gear hadn't been rusted solid.

But we know there's no money for maintenance and hasn't been for years. Most of us have got called pessimists for mentioning it. The canals came back into life through volunteer labour, corporate stuff was never going to keep it going just because a few well off people love the life style, and the young who might once have got stuck in have got their own struggles to contend with.

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

17 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

They appear to be funding the yacht club move too, which always seemed a bit unnecessary to me.

as long as they get a nice bar 😃

 

swings in roundabouts,

maybe,

there’s always going to be the extra bits, bobs and add ons to improvements and developments,

winners and losers,

there are some boating clubs that seem to have done ok outta the HS2,

 

 

 

 

[Cheshire cat]

Given the doom and gloom in this thread you've got to wonder why restorations are continuing.

 

Someone has told me that C&RT are declining to take on an newly restored waterways. Has there been an official statement on this? I can't find one.

[Mike Todd]

1 hour ago, Arthur Marshall said:

They appear to be funding the yacht club move too, which always seemed a bit unnecessary to me. Fix the reservoir, yes, but let the boys pay for their own damn club.

But this is what you get for skimping on maintenance, same as the T&M breach that flooded Northwich , which could have been avoided if most of the weir paddle gear hadn't been rusted solid.

But we know there's no money for maintenance and hasn't been for years. Most of us have got called pessimists for mentioning it. The canals came back into life through volunteer labour, corporate stuff was never going to keep it going just because a few well off people love the life style, and the young who might once have got stuck in have got their own struggles to contend with.

As mr parry implied in his piece,  when you have less money than is really needed, then you gave to make judgement calls in what has to be omitted. In this case they cut it too fine but CaRT are really not where the buck should stop - the real decision lies with the Gov, proxy for the Great Britushh Public. Same goes for many if the long term non-maintenance problems in Local councils. Gov has been forcing councils to cut maintenance budgets to fund tax cuts for decades. They oft try away with it because the time lag before the impact us felt is too much for mist folk to join the dots.

[Arthur Marshall]

19 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

As mr parry implied in his piece,  when you have less money than is really needed, then you gave to make judgement calls in what has to be omitted. In this case they cut it too fine but CaRT are really not where the buck should stop - the real decision lies with the Gov, proxy for the Great Britushh Public. Same goes for many if the long term non-maintenance problems in Local councils. Gov has been forcing councils to cut maintenance budgets to fund tax cuts for decades. They oft try away with it because the time lag before the impact us felt is too much for mist folk to join the dots.

Very true. And as almost everyone on here appears to support the Party that has made the cuts, I can't actually work out why they're complaining so much. They really ought to be pleased - at least MtB is honest enough to say he will be happy to pay his 15 grand licence, though due to maintenance cuts there may not be any water to float his boat on!

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

21 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

boat

boats don’t forget. 

they’ll give him a multiple 15k bill,

 

another random sky in the air figure plucked by someone to create a fuss and a flap,

who most likely can’t even be arsed to go boating.