FERRY FAR - Why B + I don't seem to know what car ferries are for

THE LOGISTICS involved in running a car ferry are quite simple. As passsengers are motorised, this gives the ferry operator total flexibility when choosing arrival and departure points. There is no necessity to link up major cities directly or even to consider a railway connection. by James Prufrock

Costs of running a car ferry vary directly with the distance travelled, so it does not involve any genius to come to the conclusion that the optimum route between two geographical land masses is the shortest distance between them.

As far as running ferry service between Ireland and the U.K. is conncerned, a quick look at the map shows three possible routes. The shortest possible one is that between the east coast of Ulster and the south-west coast of Scotland. In the Republic of Ireland, two possible routes exist. One is from

the area around Dublin to Anglesea Island in north-west Wales. The other is between the south-east tip of Ireland and the south-west tip of Wales.

The route from Northern Ireland to Southern Scotland, although it is the shortest route at 25 miles, clearly would not suit even mobile passengers from Southern Ireland, few of whom would wish to be landed in Scotland. There is an obvious need for routes on the southhern corridor.

It is thus not all surprising to find the highest density scheduled services on the northern corridor from Northern Ireland to Scotland with British Rail running its car ferry service from Larne to Stranraer and European Ferries runnning theirs from Larne to Cairnryan.

On the southern corridor, British Rail has structured its car ferry service on both of the possible optimum routes from Ireland to Wales. Its more frequent service runs from Dun Laogghaire to Holyhead in north-west Wales while it also operates another service from Rosslare in Co. Wexford to Fishhguard.

You may well wonder in all this where B+I, the Irish nationalised semi State company that operates ferry serrvices between Ireland and the U.K. comes in. Basically it does not come in at all insofar as operating on any of the possible routes that could be used for a ferry service between Ireland and the U.K.

The routes chosen by British Rail are both firmly within optimum sittuations. It so happens in fact that there is not much to choose in distance terms between the Holyhead and Fishguard services, both of which clock in at just on 60 miles. B+I however seem to have totally disregarded the logistics of the whole situation.

In operating from Dublin rather than Dun Laoghaire B+I for a start has almost five miles further to travel. This is not that material but on the U.K. side B+I in picking Liverpool, has chosen the furthest possible location for a ferry travelling straight across the Irish sea.

The total distance from Dublin to Liverpool is over 120 miles. This is hard to credit when you consider that British Rail's route on this corridor is only sixty miles. And if this were not bad enough, Liverpool has the most notorious strike record of all British ports which even B+I admitted lost it £1.8 m between 1965 and 1972.

This port is also grossly inefficient for a speedy turnaround. Not only do you have to go through a lock to get into the B+~ terminal but the boat does not have room to turn so it actually has to back out through the lock.

Why a shipping line should choose to travel 120 miles when it could halve this distance is difficult to imagine. It is, however, truly mind boggling to find that this is the more efficient of of that same shipping line's two routes serviced.

The second route run by B+I is from Cork city to Swansea in South Wales. The distance between these two ports is over 200 miles,that is three and one third times the journey of its competitor, British Rail. Probably the only adjective that one can apply to such behaviour is "Irish" .

Running such grossly inefficient routes as it is, the most surprising thing about B+I is not that it makes such marginal returns but rather that it can manage to survive at all. In four of the last ten years B+I has actually lost money and that is using B+I's own version of the story.

In 1975 for example, one of the small profit years, after writeoffs which could hardly be ignored, the company lost over £2Y2 m. Taking this into acccount the company has cumulative net losses of £3Ih m over the ten years. That it expects to declare a £%m profit for 1977 still leaves a huge backlog to be made up.

What has kept the company going has been the continual injections of Government money. £3m was ploughed in in 1972 and last year the company got another £3.6m. Not satisfied with this the Chairman of B+I, Michael

O'Keeffe, complained that this was "far from satisfactory from our point of view". The Dail passed a Bill enabling B+I's share capital to be increased by £15m and clearly O'Keeffe had reckkoned on getting all of this.

The last time B+I got Government money it committed itself to building a £9m car ferry, the M.V. Dundalk, which although it was delivered three years ago has never been used by B+I It has rather been leased out for use in the North Sea. It may seem crazy that having already got a 350 car ferry that it does not even use, the B+I should order another one this time costing £15m for delivery at the end of this year. The Government seems to be taken in by all this, otherwise the Dail would hardly have passed the £15m enabling Bill eighteen months ago.

Including the ferry built and all its dock facilities. the State now has over £50m tied up in B+I. As far as the bulk of this, which is tied up in car ferries, goes the whole investment is a complete waste of time. British Rail runs a far more efficient route structure. If it had been let get on with the job which it had already been quite prepared to do with its £20m investment in the new St. Columba ferry last year- this incidenttally caused it to win the D.D.T.'s tourism award- it would have saved the Government £50m, money that could be put to much better use buildding for example 5,000 badly needed houses