Cal Mac under pressure not to cut ferry service 10/3/14
Ferry operator Caledonian Macbrayne (Cal Mac) is under pressure not to cut the number of sailings on the busy Ullapool to Stornoway route.
Hebrides News revealed in December that the present timetable of summer runs across the Minch risks being axed after the £42 million MV Loch Seaforth comes onto the route later this year.
Now Cal Mac’s chief executive Martin Dorchester is due to face the wrath of Western Isles councillors, hauliers and the local tourism industry at a ferry users’ group meeting in Stornoway on Tuesday afternoon.
He will hear of fears that the service is going backwards and Lewis may end up with a worse ferry service than before.
Cal Mac is expected to reveal its planned timetable for the new ship after the forum before launching a consultation.
Three daily summer sailings are required by the present passenger car ferry, MV Isle of Lewis to cope with the large numbers of summer tourists travelling to Lewis.
Now, this looks likely to be cut to just two with the replacement MV Loch Seaforth having a bigger car deck.
It means the present additional late night sailings on Wednesdays and Fridays, which are essential to avoid a backlog of traffic building up, could stop even though the service was originally promised to handle a boost in traffic resulting from the cheaper fares through the Scottish Government’s road equivalent tariff scheme.
One argument is the Loch Seaforth is bigger than the present vessel so has extra capacity to carry more cars without additional sailings.
But there is already so much demand that travellers cannot get car space and are turning back highlights the Outer Hebrides Tourism Industry Association (OHTIA) which wants more sailings, not less.
Even with the current additional runs, there were only eight days last July that the ferry was not full up.
The changes are unlikely to happen this year but could be introduced in summer 2015.
A Cal Mac spokesman said: "No decisions have been taken on timetables which are a matter for the operator to agree with Transport Scotland following appropriate local consultations and it would therefore be premature to discuss these outwith the formal consultation process."