The Scottish Government subsidises bus fares. It also heavily subsidises ferry services through the private sector companies it owns as their single shareholder – CalMac and Argyll Ferries.
With the new CalMac ferry between Campbeltown and Ardrossan, timetabled to offer Kintyre residents a Friday day return to Glasgow by adding on a Scotrail train journey from Ardrossan Harbour to Glasgow Central, the Scottish Government is therefore in a position of setting one of its subsidised modes of transport against another.
Scottish Citylink run five 4 hour coach returns a day between Campbeltown and Glasgow in the summer season. The company may receive state subsidy to keep its fares down, but it is a private sector operator;where CalMac is state owned.
People walk onto the coach at Campbeltown, a short ‘comfort’ stop at Inveraray is included in the journey time, and they arrive at in central Glasgow at Buchanan St in, depending on the time of day, a scheduled time from 3hrs.53m to 4hrs.03m.
With the ferry, people must check in a minimum of 10 minutes before sailing on a 2hrs.40 passage to Ardrossan; then take a train 21 minutes later from Ardrossan Harbour to Glasgow Central, arriving 46 minutes later. This is a total journey time, with check in and transfer between ferry and train, of 3hrs.57m.
There’s nothing to choose between them time-wise but, where you stay on the coach all the way to central Glasgow, a traveler on the ferry/train route will need to disembark and entrain at Ardrossan – which is sometimes fun and sometimes a pest.
In Scottish Citylink we have an established private sector service provider on the Campbeltown-Glasgow route – with a local partner, West Coast Motors [employing local people' - and together investing recently in a fleet of new supercoaches to take the service up to 5 returns a day in the summer [4 returns a day in winter].
This private sector operator is now facing competition from a state owned company which makes possible lower fares between the two destinations than are offered by the coach service.
The standard day return on Scottish Citylink is £26.60.
The Five-day Saver Return on the new ferry is: £16 – to Ardrossan.
An off-peak return train fare from Ardrossan Harbour to Glasgow Central is £8.30, which, with £16 ferry return is £24,30, less than the coach return fare; but the ‘Anytime’ train return at £12.20, if people prefer that, brings the ferry/train fare in at £28.20, just over the coach return.
However, if a traveller resident in Campbeltown and likely to travel to Glasgow for a day’s shopping reasonably often, were to buy a 6 journey ticket on the ferry – at £39.90 [which they would automatically do], this would give them a two journey ferry return cost of £13.30.
Adding to this the full ‘Anytime’ return train to Glasgow of £12.20 would create a total day return cost of £25.50, undercutting the coach fare. Adding an Off-peak train return at £8.30, which most would use, brings a day return total of £21.60, substantially under the coach day return fare.
Does Scottish Citylink have a case under competition law against the Scottish Government for bringing in – under much heavier state subsidy than is spent on bus fares and through a company it wholly owns – a competing service on the Campbeltown-Glasgow route that undercuts the fares on the existing Citylink service?
Campbeltown and Kintyre are not an island any more than are Dunoon and Cowal; and the Scottish Government is not permitted to subsidise a vehicle ferry service to Dunoon.
We think that there is an issue here and Scottish Citylink has the grunt to get their lawyers all over it.
In usage terms, while the cheaper available fares will have a part to play, our bet is that on Fridays in the first of he three year summer season pilots:
- the coach service will suffer initially, as the alternative will be new fangled;
- local residents on the route will progressively return to the coach for the convenience of staying on one carrier throughout the journey and for not having to lug your shopping between train and ferry as an additional chore the coach removes.
Where does that leave the viability of a ferry service whose timetable has been almost solely calibrated around offering residents of this thinly populated peninsula a Friday day trip to shop in Glasgow?
