grand plan or flight of fancy

[bobtrotter]

I mentioned in my intro that I am working on an idea, I would like to get some feedback from people who use waterways on a daily basis.

 

The basic premise is to try to get freight back on canals, that is why the canal network was built in the first place so it would be good to return to basics.

 

I can see many advantages to this idea,Some are: Increased revenue for upkeep and restoration of waterways, a much greener alternative to road haulage, less congestion on roads and an opportunity to increase awareness of our great waterways.

 

Obvious disadvantages include: Time scale for deliveries, possibly more congestion on waterways and greater wear and tear on waterway assets.

 

The plan I have in mind is a slow start using existing craft to pull purpose built butties to and from exchange points for transferring loads to and from road transport. I would like some feedback as to the possibility of paying you nice narrow-boaters to carry out this task initially. Eventually leading up to a fleet of working craft, operated by full time employees.

 

Just a brief outline of my plan, any feedback would be appreciated. Thank you for your time

[Wanted]

I absolutely love your spirit, however I fear they may be some obstacles that you may come up against. Towing is fine but I wonder how many boaters would be able or comfortable with hoofing a butty through single locks during there precious two weeks off, also I wonder how prohibitive insurance would be. Effectively turning leisure boats into commercial boats will change all sorts of things, license, BSC, insurance etc.

 

As with everything, there is always a way but I don't think this is it. I too would love to think that the waterways could be used again for work.

 

Maybe better to talk to the coal boats first?

 

Good luck..

 

Rob

[lockedout]

Lovely idea - but....

 

I think one of the major problems would be the interchange between road/rail and canal. There is no existing infrastructure to deal with transferring cargo. If you think about the interchange areas you would need and the services you would have to provide - office infrastructure, security, long and medium term storage, craneage, access from the road and rail network to name just a few and not even mentionning the human resource to staff these areas.

 

Also, I am not sure the canal network is up to it anymore without a huge investment, which I don't see coming any time soon.

 

Maybe you could divert some of the funding from the pipe dream that is HS2???

[keble]

There is some infrastructure on the Glos Sharpness canal. OK it's not very long (16 miles) but I wonder if any of the road traffic that delivers to/offloads from Sharpness actually is quite local anyway?

 

I was down there yesterday watching a ship being unloaded and the heavy lorry traffic is surprising.

[koukouvagia]

To get a realistic view, see what the the Commercial Boat Operators Association have to say.http://www.cboa.org.uk

Edited September 3, 2013 by koukouvagia

[BEngo]

The economics don't stack up. It's not about speed, or fuel burn; it's about ton-miles per man-hour. For UK sized craft and loads, the truck and the train have it sewn up except in some special cases where the extra costs can be buried by handouts/grants- London gravel for example.

 

Your proposal involves double- or treble- handling. These are a recipe for economic and customer service disaster.

 

The costs of an exchange point are large and they have to be spread over the traffic that uses it. This means that a slow start will either mean even more expensive transport or a big loss for the business.

 

Finally, unless you are thinking of using mainly the rivers, the additional traffic will cause water-supply problems on many routes in normally dry years.

 

N

[bottle]

At the moment I am in Manchester and have yet to notice anywhere where a boat could be unloaded easily onto a wharf or into a lorry.

 

Manchester at one time was a major interchange, sea, canal, rail, road but now so much has been changed for leisure, housing infrastructure that the wharfs, docks have been cut off from anything else.

 

Oh! and the Rochdale canal out of Manchester is closed, has been since Sunday and it is expected to last until next weekend at the earliest.

 

Sorry Bob, you may have to look at being a 'millionaire oneday' another way.

[Paul C]

Basically, historically many countries (not just UK) developed a canal infrastructure. But they didn't stop at 7' wide, what happened was those networks in other countries were re-invested upon a number of times, widening and improving the system for commercial traffic. Hence, the canals in eg France are substantially different to the UK canals. UK did widen some (to 14' or so) and a handful (Manchester Ship Canal and Exeter Ship Canal) were built from the outset as large canals.

 

IF railways hadn't come along, then possibly we'd have seen the expansion (in cargo handling capacity, from widening) of more of the canal network, and kept it in line with industrial growth. But then trucks came along too, etc etc

 

So what we're left with is a rather nice historical quirk of narrow canals and old infrastructure, which is great for holidaymakers to enjoy looking at (including visitors to the UK who hire - Americans don't have nearly as much history as us), but it almost useless for commercial use. The very few remaining commercial operators are more hobbyists than a profitable enterprise, eg coal/fuel/service boats, cheese boats, sweetie boat etc.

 

On that basis, I don't think your idea will be successful as is. However, the idea of expanding commercial use has already been done - but on the Manchester Ship Canal. There is a £50bn project to increase commercial traffic on the MSC, for the benefit of the environment amongst other things - google "Atlantic Gateway Project" for information.

[WJM]

Met a bloke once who operated freight 747s between Tokyo and London. Told him I presumed the freight was all perishables that had to move fast. No! Hardly any of that. mostly it was high-value non-perisable. Reason: It made better business sense to get the product to market and sold quickly, than having vast stocks crawling around the seas for months on end.

 

Our canal system is too slow for high-value freight and too small for bulk. Outside of occasional niches, our canal system can never be used commercially again. It is a legacy leisure resource, enjoy!

 

 

Edit: by 'too small' I really mean too narrow and shallow

Edited September 3, 2013 by WJM

[howardang]

I mentioned in my intro that I am working on an idea, I would like to get some feedback from people who use waterways on a daily basis.

 

The basic premise is to try to get freight back on canals, that is why the canal network was built in the first place so it would be good to return to basics.

 

I can see many advantages to this idea,Some are: Increased revenue for upkeep and restoration of waterways, a much greener alternative to road haulage, less congestion on roads and an opportunity to increase awareness of our great waterways.

 

Obvious disadvantages include: Time scale for deliveries, possibly more congestion on waterways and greater wear and tear on waterway assets.

 

The plan I have in mind is a slow start using existing craft to pull purpose built butties to and from exchange points for transferring loads to and from road transport. I would like some feedback as to the possibility of paying you nice narrow-boaters to carry out this task initially. Eventually leading up to a fleet of working craft, operated by full time employees.

 

Just a brief outline of my plan, any feedback would be appreciated. Thank you for your time

The title of this thread suggests the answer, I'm afraid. It is a flight of fancy which will bring you a lot of heartache; many people have suggested schemes to revitalise large scale commercial use on the waterways without any success. With the exception of some local pockets of commercial use (the Northern waterways around Yorkshire for example) where the remnants of an infrastructure hangs on by its fingernails with new projects still being proposed and developed, the biggest majority of the waterway network has lost the capability for commercial development on anything but a very small scale.

 

Howard

[bobtrotter]

Thank you all for your feedback, it was a nice dream but there are insurmountable problems, maybe in another life this will happen

 

Back to the drawing board.

[FadeToScarlet]

Duplicate topics merged.

[Simon (Hawksmoor)]

At the moment I am in Manchester and have yet to notice anywhere where a boat could be unloaded easily onto a wharf or into a lorry.

 

Wigan Pier?

(there must be a book in that idea somewhere)

[FadeToScarlet]

One major problem is the access problem. If you're transshipping goods from lorries to boats, and back to lorries again, the shippers will just say "well, why not just drive it all the way there in the first lorry". Having to unload and reload twice, into two different lorries, won't be cost effective, let alone the cost of actually transporting on the boat.

[Paul C]

Yeah, narrow canals can't accommodate standard container size (which is about 8' wide).