Freight on the waterways

[Goldie]

A lot of good work is being done at the moment by the IWA and boaters in general to protect potential working wharf sites from residential development... but for me, this begs the question, is freight carriage -particulerly on narrow waterways - viable? Are there customers out there who are prepared to ship by water and would the income that would produce be enough to service the capital costs of a freight business and pay a living wage to staff and crew?

 

I think that's a question that could be discussed on the forum forever, more or less; but I would rather see instead a robust, costed business plan which could be used to generate custom and investment. And I can't think of a better place to start putting that together than with a community of boaters who actually use the country's canals.

 

If you can contribute to bringing this about, then please post below! You might work or have worked in a freight handling or transport business and be able to help with costing or advising about what sort of service customers will want; you might have ideas about opportunities for freight traffic that you have seen whilst cruising, or experience in sales and advertising that could help a waterways freight operation take off. You might ship freight commercially on the Trent or Aire and Calder already.

 

There's a lot of received wisdom about this subject; for instance, that british narrow boats don't have sufficient capacity to carry a viable load, or that BW don't dredge to a sufficient depth to allow freight traffic. It's stuff like this that needs to be tested so that people with an interest in this area don't have to build from the ground up, every time the idea of shipping by water is raised.

 

Thanks in advance for your contributions.

[Machpoint005]

However desirable the idea (or undesirable, bearing in mind that most of the waterways network is de facto a leisure resource) I cannot help thinking that the environmentally friendly and economical solution would be to move freight over from the roads to the vastly under-used railways. The cargoes most suited to waterway transport - bulk cargoes that do not deteriorate with time - are also ideally suited to rail transport. Any of the arguments used for the expansion of canal transport can equally be applied to rail.

 

It's an appealing and romantic idea but common sense says the railways can do it much better. It was true in the latter half of the 19th century and it's still true. To mention but one practical reason: you can move an ISO container by rail (or road, of course) but not on a narrowboat.

 

Ian

[DHutch]

This has been discused before in varous forms.

- There is some freight going by canal already, as im sure anyone from the uxbridge area will tell you about, land and water have a number of gravel barges there.

- Also, the other issue, is that our railways are basicaly runing to capacity! Anyone whos seen the chaos that one late runing train causes has witnessed how very tight the timetables are.

 

To me there are two really issues that need to be worked on

- One, increasing rail capacity and useage thoughout the contry.

- Two, reducing our frieght traffic load thought the whole world.

 

 

Daniel

[bottle]

I have lost track of the item at the moment but before the floods they (BW with a private company) were looking at re-introducing gravel transportation on the Severn (river) and then onto the Gloucester/Sharpness canal.

 

The Severn requires dredging for the barges to be able to manoeuvre at some bends.

 

This is because BW has not maintained the river to previous spec.

 

Where the new Gloucester bypass bridge (road) has been built, the canal was straightened.

 

This would have enabled the old bit of canal to be used as a docking area, the delivery point was nearby, this was muted in the plans but apparently someone slipped up and the old bit was used as dumping area for the spoil from the roadworks.

 

Here was a great opportunity to remove a large number of lorries from the roads of the city, we hope it will happen.

 

It would be nice to see transport back on the canals but as Machpoint says most transport in the world is now by standardised containers, which the railways already carry and so does road transport.

[Teadaemon]

I agree that the inability of narrowboats to carry an ISO container is probably the biggest obstacle to moving goods by canal or river, but equally the idea of linking the north and south wide-beam networks is not a new one, and wide-beams are big enough for ISO containers. Personally, if I were planning such a link I'd actually suggest two - one in the west linking in to the Severn, and one in the East. That way a single failure or piece of maintenance won't divide the system into two (again), and boats wanting to get from north to south or vice versa won't have to potentially detour from one side of the country and back again.

 

The carriage of cargo by river and canal is still economic on the continent, I see no reason why it couldn't be feasable in the UK again if a government decided that it would be a good idea and funded it appropriately.

[DHutch]

I agree that the inability of narrowboats to carry an ISO container is probably the biggest obstacle...

Yeah, its a bit pants isnt it!

- You could make 7ft 'iso' containers, but although a lot of container lorrys/handling can cope with non standard lenghts as part of being able to cope with the multiple stanard lenghts that there already are, very few of them have provision for anything other than the stanard 8ft width.

 

 

Daniel

[Teadaemon]

Yeah, its a bit pants isnt it!

- You could make 7ft 'iso' containers, but although a lot of container lorrys/handling can cope with non standard lenghts as part of being able to cope with the multiple stanard lenghts that there already are, very few of them have provision for anything other than the stanard 8ft width.

Daniel

 

I've thought about this a fair bit (life as a stay-at-home dad can be rather boring at times), and I don't think it's going to be feasable to carry cargo containers on 7' wide narrowboats - ISO containers are too large, and non-standard containers would require the contents to be unpacked and reloaded into ISO containers for onward transport by any other method, which will never be cost-effective (although it occurs to me that it might be possible to build an ISO container into which a narrower container could be slotted quickly and securely). It might be interesting to look at methods of transporting standard-sized pallets by narrowboat, as they'd fit, and with appropriate cargo-handling equipment (either on the boat or at the wharf) I suspect they could be moved around fairly efficiently.

[ChrisG]

Just out of interest, Goldie, where do you come from on this?

 

Do you just want to promote this, or do have your own business plan? I'm certainly all in favour, but I think we've left it kinda late, compared to even the Freycinet gauge our canals are titchy. The "smaller" French canals (as opposed to the larger industrial waterways) through the centre of France which conform to this 300 tonne barge standard (38.5m long, 5m wide and 2.5m deep) are virtually dead commercially,

 

Boating from the Channel to the Med back in 2001 a couple of times, a commercial peniche passing through was a major event - keepers were motoring and cycling up and down the towpath, telling you not to move until it had passed, etc.

 

And on the major northern canals, being overtaken at about 10 knots as opposed to my 5 by a 1350 tonne petrol barge is an interesting experience . . .

[Freetochat]

I think carriage of freight by water is a romantic idea for the enthusiasts, but as has already been mentioned, you can't get beyond the original reason for the demise of canal freight and that is better efficiency on road or secondly rail. Rail cannot expand much more, without major investment in infrastructure, and in any case, passenger movements have the priority. In my view, it is more likely that we will see a reduction in goods transport. Currently, everything is being blamed on climate change, whether it is wet weather or the need for more taxation or higher energy or water bills. I believe that we are heading for extreme penalty taxation to reduce goods movement around the globe. Yes it will be done in the name of climate change, but is more likely to involve some national protectionism. Current political thinking will see more localised production.

[mayalld]

A lot of good work is being done at the moment by the IWA and boaters in general to protect potential working wharf sites from residential development... but for me, this begs the question, is freight carriage -particulerly on narrow waterways - viable? Are there customers out there who are prepared to ship by water and would the income that would produce be enough to service the capital costs of a freight business and pay a living wage to staff and crew?

 

No.

 

I could go on for many paragraphs to show that it will never work, but the end conclusion is that it won't work.

[Teadaemon]

No.

 

I could go on for many paragraphs to show that it will never work, but the end conclusion is that it won't work.

 

I disagree, but with the provisos that if it were to be made to work:

 

a) a carbon tax would need to be in operation (making rail and especially road transport less attractive)

 

the vessels and waterways would not bear a great deal of resemblence to those currently in use.

 

One thought I did have was that it might be cost effective to have a string of unmanned barges, tracked by GPS (or another system if/when we get one) and controlled by computer, with maybe one crew member at either end of the string just so we don't take humans out of the control loop completely. With microwave radar to look at what's above the water and forward-looking sonar for below, the computer would probably have a better idea of what's going on than you or I would, and wouldn't be distracted by the pretty scenery either.

[carlt]

I disagree, but with the provisos that if it were to be made to work:

 

a) a carbon tax would need to be in operation (making rail and especially road transport less attractive)

 

the vessels and waterways would not bear a great deal of resemblence to those currently in use.

 

One thought I did have was that it might be cost effective to have a string of unmanned barges, tracked by GPS (or another system if/when we get one) and controlled by computer, with maybe one crew member at either end of the string just so we don't take humans out of the control loop completely. With microwave radar to look at what's above the water and forward-looking sonar for below, the computer would probably have a better idea of what's going on than you or I would, and wouldn't be distracted by the pretty scenery either.

Are you suggesting we remove pleasure boats from the cut? There is so much congestion that freight will never co-exist, in a major way, with the leisure boating machine.

 

Your idea wouldn't work in the antiquated canal system, either. imagine trying to get 'a string' of dumb barges through foxton flight during easter week.

[saltysplash]

The only way our canals could become commerially viable waterways is if they are totally transformed and upgraded to european waterways. That means totally rebuilding virtually the whole system. It would no longer be the 200 yr old attraction it is now but would change beyond all recognition. then and only then could vessels begin their journey in germany and deposit their cargo's in birmingham or wherever without transfering the cargo to road as now happens. Also the geography of our island would mean there would have to be some pretty huge feats of engineering to get the canals through those hills, over them and across them. Doubt if the Government would be willing to invest too much in that.

[zenataomm]

So: -

You spend a fortune dreging so loaded boats can pass.

You then build a fleet of new boats for commercial work.

You buy back the wharves that are now yuppy flats, so you have somewhere to tranship.

You invest in how many 7ft. wide containers hundreds? thousands?

You obtain national agreement that commercial boats may jump the queue at locks.

That only leaves: -

Lack of water at the summits in the summer.

Closures due to river flooding at any time of the year.

Complete blockage by ice in the winter.

Yearly maintenance stoppage list.

 

And all that's before we even consider the costs of BWB commercial licence, business insurance and the little point that the customer doesn't actually trade from premises conveniently next door to the canal and as he's going to have to send a truck down to the depot to collect it, so is just as likely to decide to stick it on a truck in the first place.

 

Being a one man band with a suitable boat and able to be flexible enough to buy a bit of coal to sell to the Thames lock keepers, whilst selling some ropework you knocked up over the weekend. Before being lucky enough to grab a bit of advertising work from a brewery delivering beer to one of their canalside pubs SMILE FOR THE CAMERAS, OOH! CAN YOU JUST BACK IT UP AND WE'LL SHOOT THAT AGAIN MR. BARGEE is one thing. But I'm afraid to say that commercial carrying on long distance narrow boats was on to a loser even when Lesley Morton rubber stamped the business plan for The Grand Union Canal Carrying Co. without which we wouldn't still have so many Royalty, Star and Town Class boats still around.

 

I wish it were diferrent ................... however

[John Orentas]

Our canal system was effectively put out out of existence by the availability of a few thousand ex-military lorries that became available after the first war, are we now to believe that our 4 mph canal system is able to compete against a multi-billion pound road transport system running on high speed motorways. On top of that the fact that a lorry can drive into your factory yard and leave your goods onto the shop floor.

 

What we have got is a small group of blokes who have no need to make a commercial profit, who want to play at olde worlde boatmen with spotted hankies round their necks.

 

If they want to do that well let's just leave them to it, but let's not use any valuable resources on any daft schemes.

[Jason Wilson and Family]

I'm all for preserving the wharves, perhaps as marinas if BW insists on that direction. But I agree with the rest, freight on the canals will cause a lot more fuss than it is worth. Hell they're protesting the expansion of Heathrow (a system which does get used) in the name of Global Warming, why on earth would a diesel run, waterborne freight movement get by?

[mayalld]

I disagree, but with the provisos that if it were to be made to work:

 

a) a carbon tax would need to be in operation (making rail and especially road transport less attractive)

 

the vessels and waterways would not bear a great deal of resemblence to those currently in use.

 

One thought I did have was that it might be cost effective to have a string of unmanned barges, tracked by GPS (or another system if/when we get one) and controlled by computer, with maybe one crew member at either end of the string just so we don't take humans out of the control loop completely. With microwave radar to look at what's above the water and forward-looking sonar for below, the computer would probably have a better idea of what's going on than you or I would, and wouldn't be distracted by the pretty scenery either.

 

The question was specifically about the narrow canal network.

 

It's a no brainer. The sums just don't add up to a viable business.

 

There are always going to be hopeless nostalgics who decide what they want the answer to the question to be, and then try to construct a business case back from that. It always ends up excluding some cost, or having people working for nothing.

[WJM]

"Our canal system was effectively put out out of existence by the availability of a few thousand ex-military lorries that became available after the first war,"

 

 

Yes - combined with trade-unionised restrictive practices in the handling of waterborne cargo. Canal carrying died very suddenly because it was so much easier to buy a lorry and put a bloke who was glad of a job in the cab than it was to suffer the lefty bullsh*t that went on in places like Brentford transshipment basins. Little tea-towel size canvasses put on top of a narrowboat's load at 4.30pm to 'prevent' the crew from unloading themselves that evening, a boat 95% unloaded by 5pm on a Friday and the shop steward 'bans' anyone from taking the remaining 5% out till Monday. The Great British spirit of self destruction!

 

As the green eco movement sweeps across industry it my well become viable to move certain items by water. Aggregates already do move by water and more could follow.

[Teadaemon]

Are you suggesting we remove pleasure boats from the cut? There is so much congestion that freight will never co-exist, in a major way, with the leisure boating machine.

 

Your idea wouldn't work in the antiquated canal system, either. imagine trying to get 'a string' of dumb barges through foxton flight during easter week.

 

Well to be honest, with the ideas I had in mind, most of the network we have today wouldn't see a great deal of traffic, so there should be plenty of room for pleasure boaters. Given the ridiculous costs involved in trying to keep our roads moving (IIRC something like £9 billion to upgrade 50 miles or so of the M6), building new canals for commercial use might not be such a huge expense after all. As far as locks and flights of computerised barges go, I see no reason not to automate the locks too.

 

I admit my thoughts on this subject tend towards 'blue-sky thinking' and big projects, but that's mainly because I can't see any way of making the current system work as an efficient, large-scale freight delivery network. Rather than then saying "it can't be done", I prefer to spend my energy thinking of ways in which the end result (freight carriage on inland waterways) could potentially be achieved.

[fender]

A lot of good work is being done at the moment by the IWA and boaters in general to protect potential working wharf sites from residential development... but for me, this begs the question, is freight carriage -particulerly on narrow waterways - viable? Are there customers out there who are prepared to ship by water and would the income that would produce be enough to service the capital costs of a freight business and pay a living wage to staff and crew?

 

I think that's a question that could be discussed on the forum forever, more or less; but I would rather see instead a robust, costed business plan which could be used to generate custom and investment. And I can't think of a better place to start putting that together than with a community of boaters who actually use the country's canals.

 

If you can contribute to bringing this about, then please post below! You might work or have worked in a freight handling or transport business and be able to help with costing or advising about what sort of service customers will want; you might have ideas about opportunities for freight traffic that you have seen whilst cruising, or experience in sales and advertising that could help a waterways freight operation take off. You might ship freight commercially on the Trent or Aire and Calder already.

 

There's a lot of received wisdom about this subject; for instance, that british narrow boats don't have sufficient capacity to carry a viable load, or that BW don't dredge to a sufficient depth to allow freight traffic. It's stuff like this that needs to be tested so that people with an interest in this area don't have to build from the ground up, every time the idea of shipping by water is raised.

 

Thanks in advance for your contributions.

 

I dont think I quite agree, yes there are many reasons why narrow canals arent particularly suitable for freight, but it wasnt so long ago that people also thought the railways wernt able to meet the demands of modern day commercial carrying. Look at how the private companies have brought so much freight back to the railways, much of which was through sheer initiative. Its a case of saying it can work and making it work.

 

Lets think of an example - perhaps a network of canalside pubs within a certain area that are difficult to access via narrow roads (eg smaller lorries or trucks are needed to make the delivery) Surely a pair of working boats could make a better job and make it more economic too by servicing more than one pub? It only needs someone to do some research and put this to the relevant brewery companies. I'm sure there are many other possibles it only needs imagination.

[mayalld]

I dont think I quite agree, yes there are many reasons why narrow canals arent particularly suitable for freight, but it wasnt so long ago that people also thought the railways wernt able to meet the demands of modern day commercial carrying. Look at how the private companies have brought so much freight back to the railways, much of which was through sheer initiative. Its a case of saying it can work and making it work.

 

Lets think of an example - perhaps a network of canalside pubs within a certain area that are difficult to access via narrow roads (eg smaller lorries or trucks are needed to make the delivery) Surely a pair of working boats could make a better job and make it more economic too by servicing more than one pub? It only needs someone to do some research and put this to the relevant brewery companies. I'm sure there are many other possibles it only needs imagination.

 

there will always be micro-scale niche markets where the canal would work, but they will be tiny in the scale of things.

[fender]

there will always be micro-scale niche markets where the canal would work, but they will be tiny in the scale of things.

 

not neccesarily, Land & water have many contracts in the London area including the transportation of spent plaster for recycling from Kings Cross, this isnt a micro-scale niche market, its making the companies aware of the potentialites of water transport and tailoring the economics to tempt companies into doing it, its an expansive market

[mayalld]

not neccesarily, Land & water have many contracts in the London area including the transportation of spent plaster for recycling from Kings Cross, this isnt a micro-scale niche market, its making the companies aware of the potentialites of water transport and tailoring the economics to tempt companies into doing it, its an expansive market

 

And this is on narrow canals (which were the subject of the original question) is it?

[fender]

And this is on narrow canals (which were the subject of the original question) is it?

 

no its an example of pioneering innovation:

 

the size of the canal is irrelevant

 

what is important is a consensus that it can be done

[WJM]

"And this is on narrow canals (which were the subject of the original question) is it?"

 

 

 

'Land and Water's own boats are broad but they subcontract to a narrowboat user