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aterways: most operators don't want to know

23rd February 1985
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

While 10 times the present amount of freight could be carried on an already improved network, a larger share of the market won't be landed without a lot of persuasion. Bob Greenwood reports

ANOTHER step was taken by the Government last week to discourage the transport of commodities by road. The Department of Transport announced that it would be giving a grant of £61,000 to transport operator Sheffield Haulage and Storage to help it improve its handling facilities at the Eastwood Trading Estate at Rotherham. Among the improvements will be the building of a new access road, but the intention is not to promote the company's road haulage activities.

The grant is to be made under Section 36 of the 1981 Transport Act. This is designed to encourage investment by companies in transport by water in cases where the Department considers that a change from road to waterways will have an environmental benefit. As much as 60 per cent of the cost of wharves, craft, handling equipment and access roads can be funded under this special Transport Act provision.

In the case of Sheffield Haulage and Storage the grant will go towards expanding its wharfside facilities on the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation. Included in this will be the installation of new heavyduty handling equipment to help the transfer between barge and lorry loads principally of steel and scrap metal.

The wharf is now able to accommodate barges of up to 700 tonnes, whereas the standard barge size until now has been 350 tonnes. The contents of the barges are transferred to ships at the port of Goole, for export.

According to the Department of Transport, the grant was given because the extension of facilities at the Rotherham wharf could save up to 10,000 lorry movements a year on the A630 between Rotherham and Doncaster.

But Sheffield Haulage, which does not own a lorry fleet but hires as vehicles as and wher they are needed, does not an ticipate reducing its road opera tions overall, said a compary spokesman.

Government spending on in land waterways does not en( with grants to operators Around £16 million was spen to improve the Sheffield an' South Yorkshire Navigation ii self, although the bill was split between the Government, South Yorkshire County Council and the European Economic Community's Regional Development Fund.

As a result of the improvement, which was completed in the spring of 1983, Rotherham is now the furthest point inland in Britain which can be reached by barges of 700 tonnes.

The opening of the rebuilt canal was hailed by the British Waterways Board as "the biggest improvement scheme to a commercial waterway for nearly 70 years." It added in its publicity notice announcing the opening, however, that "it was the culmination of many years of the board persuading the Government that the scheme was worthwhile."

Improvements to the freight handling capabilities of the Sheffield and South Yorkshire canal are continuing. Due for completion this spring is a large British Waterways Board transhipment depot at Rotherham. This development includes Customs approved specialist and general warehousing, full cargo-handling facilities and good access roads. The wharf stands on a six-acre site, but there are a further 14 acres for private development. The board hopes to attract local industry to use the canal.

While the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation investments have still to prove their worth, across the Penines the Weaver Navigation, which runs from Northwich to the Mersey, is celebrating its 250th anniversary with increasing freight tonnages. In 1983 the waterways board's Anderton depot on the canal set new limits when it handled its first 1,000-tonne cargo and followed that record by increasing its traffic by 11.3 per cent in the first quarter of 1984.

Such capability has been aided by an improvement programme which has included increasing the depot's wharf to take two coasters, the installation of a 50-tonne capacity weighbridge and the building of a small (15,000sqft) additional warehouse.

The canal itself has also undergone improvements, such as widening and lock refurbish ment including the installation of electro-hydraulic machinery.

The British Waterways Board now hopes to get Government support to improve the Weaver Navigation further so that it will be able to take ships of up to 1,500 tonnes.

An even more ambitious project which the board is trying persuade the Government to sanction is a major redevelopment of the Severn Corridor. This would entail enlarging the canal to take sea-going ships of up to 1,500 tonnes deadweight as far inland as Worcester. At present barges of up to 350 tonnes only can navigate that far. Downstream, the Sharpness/Gloucester Canal which bypasses a meandering section of the River Severn has a size limit of 750 tonnes.

Part of the Board's proposals included the establishment of three industrial development areas — at Sharpness, Gloucester and Worcester — with links to the motorway system via new road improvement schemes. Funding, it is proposed, could come from local authorities, the European Commission or the European Investment Bank in the form of grants.

So far, the Government has not committed itself to the British Waterways Board's proposals for developing the Severn Corridor. Probably the most obvious point in favour of water transport is its potential to move very large loads. A standard 700-tonne dwt barge has the carrying capacity of 35 38-tonne gross combination weight heavy goods vehicles. Another standard vessel, the 400-tonne dwt push-tow train — a tug pulling or pushing three unpowered barges — is said to have the capacity of 20 similar heavy goods vehicles.

Added to that is the ability of modern barges to eliminate much of the double handling which takes place in ports and the relative ease of transhipment for ship to barge and vice-versa compared with shore-based handling.

But in spite of the economic and environmental advantages of transporting freight by inland waterways as put forward by their proponents, the British Waterways Board has had only limited success so far in attracting new business. Tonnages transported remain relatively small. For the past few years there appears to have been little growth; the waterways under the BWB's control have been carrying around five million tonnes of cargo a year.

The amount of "track" available, though, is also fairly small. There may be 4,830km (3,000 miles) of navigable waterway in Britain, but most canals are big enough only for recreational use. Of this total network, the BWB is responsible for 3,220km (2,000 miles) and only 541 (336 miles) of them are designated Commercial Waterways under the 1968 Transport Act. That commercial network is by no means comprehensive. Rather, it is confined to four separate groupings behind the estuaries of the Mersey, Humber, Thames and Severn.

Nevertheless, the Board frankly admits that the routes are under used. It believes that the waterways could support 10 times the amount of traffic they are carrying.

Further evidence of the unwillingness of companies to commit themselves to water transport is the so far poor uptake of Government grants to develop waterside facilities. Last week's award of £61,000 to Sheffield Haulage and Storage was only the third to have been given under the provisions of the 1981 Act. The largest of these by far was made to an importer of Finnish paper and board, Varma Services, at the end of October last year. It was given £859,000 towards the installation of facilities at a Thames-side wharf at Deptford so that it could avoid making 13,000 lorry journeys each year to bring its products from the East Coast to its London markets.

Grant provision so far to encourage companies to go into water transport amounts to less than £1.3 million. That is small indeed when compared with similar grants awarded under the Government's Freight Facilities Grant Scheme to encourage the transfer of traffic from road to rail. Last year there were 25 applications for grants and one alone for more than £3 million is expected to be announced soon.

Why, then, do transport operators and other companies appear to be unwilling to become involved in inland waterways? The experience of one West Yorkshire company with both road and waterways freight interests may provide part of the answer.

Hargreaves (Castleford) runs a combined fleet of push-tow tugs and "dumb" barges and self-powered barges — 13 cargo carrying vessels in all, each with a 200-tonne capacity. In addition it operates 19 hgv, all rigid tippers. Its sister company, Cawoods Hargreaves, has 55 510-tonne capacity threecompartment barges and nine tugs, a system designed by the company to do just one job. They all carry coal to the Central Electricity Generating Board's new Ferrybridge powerstation near Pontefract.

The annual tonnage of coal moved by water from local collieries by both companies runs at around 23/4 million tonnes. The tippers transport up to 11/3 million tonnes annually.

Walter Haigh, Hargreave's assistant manager of canal operations, says that the ratio of road to waterway traffic is fairly constant and he expects it to remain so. But a factor which could limit expansion of carriage of coal by water is that there are now fewer coal loading points. Whereas most of the older collieries in the traditional Yorkshire coal producing areas are water connected, many of the newer ones are not.

Hargreaves's biggest problem at the moment, however, is that it is not moving any coal whatever and has not done so for the past 11 months owing to the miners' strike — evidently, water transport is no more immune to industrial action than are other forms of goods movement.

Coal is a staple commodity for commercial waterways operators, which is hardly surprising for a transport system which lends itself to the carriage of bulk items. Sand and gravel, grain and effluent are also important. So, too, is petrochemicals, but here the water transport industry, and the British Waterways Board in particular, received a recent setback.

The board runs five per cent of the total commercial barge fleet, from which it derives roughly a third of its revenue. Grants account for the remainder of a total income which in 1983 amounted to over £57 million. One of its biggest customers was BP Oil, but that business has been withdrawn.

A spokesman for BP confirmed: "We are moving away from water transport, even though it is cheaper by boat." He added, however: "The problem is the high cost of putting in and keeping going the intermediate staging post which are needed for storage. Also, road transport is now more efficient."

New pipelines were also taking more of the traffic, he said. The company has recently announced the closure of its waterway terminals at Northfleet and Fulham and is disbanding its esturine fleet o1 two ships.

In spite of and, no doubt, owing to the slow growth ir waterways traffic, the board': Freight Division is making a de termined effort to market th( cargo carrying potential of th( canal system. In October las year it launched a new mar keting policy, supported by wel produced literature, emphasis ing the ability of the system tc provide totally integrated trans port system along with land based transport facilities anc inland depots. It will have a lo of persuading to do if we are tc see the commercial waterway! used to anything like their ful freight carrying potential.


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