Residents on the Isle of Wight have complained that they have been “cut off from society” as ferry companies charge up to £440 for a return to the mainland.
Locals say that the “ridiculous” prices, compounded by cancellations and delays, have left them wishing that they never moved to the island.
The £440 is, obviously, the turn up and buy at very peak yachtie season. £35 for a resident, car and passengers is more likely.
Frustration among locals has seen a 10-year battle for a “freedom tunnel” to connect the island to the mainland 24 hours a day or for a bridge erected for the same purpose.
Guess who they’ll expect to pay for that?
Far more isolating is the occasional inability of Red Funnel or Wightlink to have the right number of operational ferries. Not nearly as bad as CalMac. But give them time. Both companies have proudly announced their plans to introduce hybrid ferries to reduce their carbon footprints. Choosing to embrace greater complexity is a bit of a threat to reliability.
I would have thought that the main benefit of moving to an island was being cut off from the rest of the world. Anyway isn’t there a business opportunity here? A passenger boat in partnership with a car hire company could make a killing.
The rate the Prime Minister of the UK is increasing his cattiness with Musk he’ll expect Elon to cough up for a nice new Milifriendly ferry…
I visit the IoW several times a year (daughter lives there part time). It’s like turning the calendar back 30 or 40 years. Relaxed, polite, old fashioned in a good way. The last thing they need is a bridge or tunnel.
What a stupid place to have an island.
Not close enough for a bridge, not far enough for a sensible ferry.
Bad planning from Hants County Council.
And the channel between the island and mainland has a deep buried channel and needs to be navigable by rather big ships, making a deep tunnel in the solid geology fabulously expensive and an immersed tube tunnel rather hazardous.
The price per person isn’t so bad if you fill every seat in the car, but for a driver only seems ridiculous. I’ve used the £36 return on the Southsea Ryde hovercraft, and resented the £13 daily parking fee at Clarence Pier. I wouldn’t dream of taking the family multiplying that £36 by 4. ON the island, you need a chum with a car, or go by Tube or bus (the railway uses ex London Tue stock!).
Friends of my parents had a holiday let in Ryde and we went most years. This was over 50 years ago and I seem to remember the ferry crossing with a car was expensive even then for the short distance. I guess it was something my dad said.
With overheads, dock facilities, loading etc. the cost of a 10 mile ferry trip is not much less than a 20 or 30 mile trip.
If profits were abnormally high other operators would petition for a permit to operate.
When they get the tunnel they will moan about too many tourists.
Thank you Broom!!!
Guess who they’ll expect to pay for that?
As Labour have other priorities it could only be private enterprise in which case the gnashing and wailing at the resultant tolls will far exceed the current bitching about the ferries. Academic really because it’s never going to happen.
Incidentally most of the islanders I come into contact with don’t have a problem with the status quo on a “better the devil you know” basis.
“Locals say that the “ridiculous” prices, compounded by cancellations and delays, have left them wishing that they never moved to the island.”
So they moved to the island, then the media interviews them as “locals”? That seems like an odd definition of the word.
Rather like the people fleeing the high taxes, crime and fecal-covered streets of San Francisco for Salt Lake City and then complaining about a lack of good Mexican restaurants.
Holiday lodgings on the IoW are priced accordingly. Campaigners for a cheap tunnel are actually landlords who want a massive uplift in their property values. I say we give them a tunnel; and to pay for it, charge LVT on the uplift only.
So they moved to the island, then the media interviews them as “locals”?
My parents bought a place there. Having visited them & got to meet the “local” I would think the numbers of natives must be trivial. Most of them have left the island for somewhere better. It’s like London now. You hardly ever meet any Londoners. Us Cockneys used to have annual get together in a phone box down the Whitechapel High Street, but we eventually had to find somewhere smaller.
“It’s like London now. You hardly ever meet any Londoners.”
That would be an improvement except for the replacements that the governing classes have chosen.
I live on the Island, and the Fixed Link comes up every few years, along with complaints about the ferries.
I did like it a good few years ago, when the response (in the local paper, IIRC) was essentially ‘If people can get to the Island easily, it’ll be so crowded it’ll put the visitors off’.
It’s like turning the calendar back 30 or 40 years
Like a lot of out-of-the-way places. NZ used to be like that but not any more. We’ve gone on holiday to La Gomera several times. It’s next door to Tenerife – 45 minutes away by ferry – but the contrast couldn’t be more stark. We can hack the shit that is TFS because it’s only for an hour or two in there each way & then it’s a relaxing boat trip from Los Cristianos. I expect La Palma is similar and especially El Hierro.
@ bis
For a change I can empathise. For a couple of decades after I had to go south to get a job* I went home every Christmas; one Christmas my parents had been invited to a party by the parents of a schoolfriend and took me along: I discovered that more of my form at school were working in London (London alone, ignoring the rest of the rich, soft, south) than in my home town.
* After four years of Wilson as PM, no jobs for me in the North-East – a pick-and-choose list in London and the South-east
I went to the IOW 20 years ago without a car and we could get everywhere we wanted by public transport but the 4 hour wait for a bus at the needles was quite some time.
A great place but living on an island always has disadvantages.
The house price to wage ratio is horrendous – I feel sorry for people who grow up there.
Residents on the Isle of Wight have complained that they have been “cut off from society”
Lucky bastards. Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?
AndrewM
Got it in one.
“ Residents on the Isle of Wight have complained that they have been “cut off from society” as ferry companies charge up to £440 for a return to the mainland.”
Interesting that they admit there is no “society” on the island.
Interesting that they admit there is no “society” on the island.
I doubt there is. Seemed to be an island full of curtain twitchers. I know that certainly described my father.
If they’re able to make 440 per person per trip . . . wouldn’t it make sense for them to buy a ferry and operate it as a collective?
Put that money back into their own pockets?
Agammamon,
Because £440 is the rare exception. Probably the Saturday morning ferry in Cowes Week. Most of the time it’s about £30.
I suspect it’s the sort of business like many holiday businesses, that the summer season pays for all the investment costs, and out-of-season just covers the staff and a tiny amount of profit.
Overall, I do like to tell these sorts of people to fuck off. You’re a fucking grown up. Don’t like it on the IOW? Move. Maybe don’t move there in the first place if you’re worried about various health issues that mean you need a major hospital. Like that woman who moved to Stow-on-the-Wold and complained there was nothing for her teenagers to do and it was an hour from a major hospital. Did you not look at a fucking map?