Corran Ferry Replacement

[paully]

How many road tunnels are there north of Glasgow again??

I can think of three, though they are all in urban areas and none go under water. They are all dual carriageways as well:
A991 Dundee Inner Ring road North Flank
A9 Burghmuir Road, Stirling (under the railway station)
B986 Denburn Road, Aberdeen (under the Trinity Shopping Centre).

[Berk]

It's not about GDP though, but the actual cost of building the tunnels. The Hindhead tunnel apparently cost around £155m per km - admittedly as a dual carriageway, so let's say it would have 'only' been around £100m per km for a single carriageway. That's still 10 times more than the Faroe tunnel. The proposals for relatively short tunnels on the A9 at Dunkeld were being quoted as over £1 billion. Why can these other countries build tunnels so cheaply compared to the UK? Less in the way of red tape, etc?

Extensive public inquiries/endless reports??

Fastidiously complex and painstaking environmental impact assessments??

Either way, it all adds up. The sooner you can build, the lower the costs will be, and less “value” has to be squeezed from the project.

[Burns]

A lot of the big Norwegian infrastructure is part funded through fixed term tolling as well, something which probably wouldn't float in Scotland, given we've abolished all our bridge tolls to date. The good thing is that once a bridge or tunnel in Norway is paid for, the toll is removed, depending on where the initial funding came from.

[Big L]

How many road tunnels are there north of Glasgow again??

I can think of three, though they are all in urban areas and none go under water. They are all dual carriageways as well:
A991 Dundee Inner Ring road North Flank
A9 Burghmuir Road, Stirling (under the railway station)
B986 Denburn Road, Aberdeen (under the Trinity Shopping Centre).

I'm not familiar with two of those, but from the descriptions given they sound like bridges rather than tunnels. Just because something looks like a tunnel it isn't necessarily a tunnel.

[Herned]

Fastidiously complex and painstaking environmental impact assessments??

Either way, it all adds up. The sooner you can build, the lower the costs will be, and less “value” has to be squeezed from the project.

Norway is hardly known for being low regulation though is it?

I think the point about just getting on with it is a good one though - procrastination must have cost a fortune over the years

[djw1981]

Stirling - approx 200yards, perhaps looks more underpass than tunnel, but the station remained open during the building AIUI and it was dug out with station in situ above. https://goo.gl/maps/tBEnp2XWKvcRPaGU6

Aberdeen looks like it was built over the road. https://goo.gl/maps/KFDSKLcjbVTcN5xQ7

Dundee looks to be the longest, so where does underpass end and tunnel begin? https://goo.gl/maps/NnU7aaSVsYRHNHGz5

[Nwallace]

Norway is resource rich having lots of petroleum and hydro electric power - statistics tell the story
Country GDP per Capita
Norway $73,450
Scotland $43,740

The bottom line is Norway has more money to spend.

Since Scotland and Norway's funding and reporting models are vastly different that's hardly surprising.
Since the UKs revenue generation from Norway is structured different that's also hardly surprising.
And also depending on which figures you've used that may or may not include Oil and Gas;

Scottish figures always have the caveat *Disnae include Oil and Gas, attached to them, it's seen as a UK wide resource.
Amazingly Malt Whisky makes an appearance on London's figures too, the manufacture may be geographically protected that doesn't stop it being treated as a London Export.

Figures aren't collected in a manner that allows you to figure it out either.


What's significant about Norway is they used the oil money to pay off debts and then started using it to invest.
Their fund is now weaning itself off of the oil revenues as the North sea starts to get more difficult to extract from.

Handling for the UK, the oil paid off loads of debts but then the UK went on an epic spending spree with general revenues in general, and finds itself skint again.
But instead of raising more revenue from what it does take money in from, it cut that and then massivley cut what's spent by government too, but is still digging deeper into debt.

[Nwallace]

Dundee looks to be the longest, so where does underpass end and tunnel begin? https://goo.gl/maps/NnU7aaSVsYRHNHGz5

That's a cut and cover; they dug a huge hole after knocking down loads of buildings.
LAte 80s early 90s IIRC

[Berk]

But the bottom line is that Edinburgh isn’t (fully) fiscally independent from London - yet.

If I had my way, all income tax raised in Scotland would be reserved to and spent in Scotland (other than foreign affairs and defence etc). And that would also mean Scotland had a finite budget to spend, but spend it however it wished.

No more top-ups from London.

[Berk]

A lot of the big Norwegian infrastructure is part funded through fixed term tolling as well, something which probably wouldn't float in Scotland, given we've abolished all our bridge tolls to date. The good thing is that once a bridge or tunnel in Norway is paid for, the toll is removed, depending on where the initial funding came from.

The trouble with the socialist model in Scotland is it’s set hard against tolls. Even when the beneficiary of those tolls.... is the Government.

Allow toll funding for new projects, and you might be surprised how much capital funding you can get on board.

[Euan]

I remember reading an article about the state of the Scottish ferries last year. To cut a long story short, there has been little investment in both ships, and the ports and harbours themselves.

There has also been a situation linked to that that each port has unique, bespoke requirements - berths, harbour approaches and so on - possibly due to inadequate investment. This means that typically each port can only accommodate a single type of vessel. Often a different one in each port.

If certain routes become busy, or overbooked due to weather and cancellations (including engineering works), this can mean some services are cancelled or diverted to make up for gaps elsewhere. So you might have a single boat operating one route on that day, packed to the rafters. Which in turn has knock-on results for Island accommodation and so on.

Some pressure should be brought to bear on CMAL to make improvements at as many harbours to ensure a wider range of ships can operate between ports. This could be linked with onshore road improvements such as bridges, creating a more regular, streamlined service.

Upgrades to the linkspans at Stornoway and Ullapool were required when the new MV Loch Seaforth arrived on that route. Although these modern linkspans were designed specifically for the width of MV Loch Seaforth, so the vessel would probably not be able to sail on any other route without upgrading the existing linkspans. Even the ferry that was replaced, MV Isle of Lewis - now on the Barra route, is wider than most other CalMac vessels and is restricted somewhat on which way it can face when arriving at linkspans.

There are two new CalMac vessels currently at different stages of assembly in Port Glasgow. Unfortunately delivering the vessels has been significantly delayed, so for the time being some of the busiest west coast ferry routes will need to make do with comparatively ancient ferries. In particular it's not especially helpful for the Arran service which is waiting for one of the new ferries. MV Caledonian Isles seems to be reliable most of the time, but MV Isle of Arran which operates only during the summer months as a 2nd vessel is quite prone to breaking down which can be a pain for travellers during good weather when MV Caledonian Isles' sailings need to turn people away because they are completely full.

Improvements are needed all across the CalMac network both in terms of ships and ports. Upgrading ports becomes particularly important following the inevitable domino effect of vessels being relocated to different routes following the arrival of a new ferry.

[Euan]

If you wanted to make this business case work then you'd probably have to include replacing Oban as the port for Barra, Coll and Tiree with Tobermory. The reduced distances for ferries would help the business case but the increased driving distances to Glasgow wouldn't.

In reality a theoretical fixed link to Mull seems much more likely to be a bridge from Oban to Kerrera then a tunnel to Duart.

And on a list of sea crossings with potential for new fixed links in Scotland I don't think Mull or Corran would be in the top 10 priorities. I'd go with something like: 1 Luing - Seil, 2 Yell - Unst, 3 Yell - Shetland, 4 Bressay - Shetland, 5 Sound of Harris, 6 Shapinsay - Orkney, 7 Whalsay - Shetland, 8 Jura - Islay, 9 Flotta - Hoy, 10 Kerrera - Mainland.

There would also be the issue of Tobermory as a major port for Coll, Tiree and Barra. Currently Tobermory only has a small slip to accommodate Loch-class ferries crossing over to Kilchoan, so as a minimum a major linkspan would be needed as well as additional docking space for a large vessel. Of course, introducing a fixed link to Mull would eliminate the need for the Oban-Craignure route and hence Tobermory would not theoretically need to be quite as extensive a port as Oban currently, but still far more extensive than at present.

In the event of a fixed link to Mull, the ferries for Coll, Tiree and Barra could use the redundant terminal at Craignure - saving traffic from the mainland a few miles

Craignure would be a possibility, although I'm not sure it would be worthwhile completely switching to Craignure instead of Oban as the main Coll/Tiree/Barra port even if there was ever a fixed link to Mull. As things stand it would be very difficult to fit more than one return trip to Barra or Coll/Tiree into one day and Craignure would not shorten the sailing times by very much. As well as that, Oban has better transport links such as the railway station.

[Euan]

To be honest, I feel the Oban-Craignure Route is safe, as it would be considerably longer by road to Ballachulish and Corran.

It would just make it easier for folks to travel between Mull, Ardmamurchan and Mallaig. And Fort William, of course.

Agreed. Only in the highly unlikely scenario of a fixed connection across the Firth of Lorn would it be in any danger. The route would still be important even if there was a Corran bridge - the levels of traffic travelling to and from Mull will be far greater in the direction of Glasgow and Edinburgh than it will be in the direction of Fort William and Inverness.

[Euan]

A lot of the big Norwegian infrastructure is part funded through fixed term tolling as well, something which probably wouldn't float in Scotland, given we've abolished all our bridge tolls to date. The good thing is that once a bridge or tunnel in Norway is paid for, the toll is removed, depending on where the initial funding came from.

Yes, if tolls were never introduced to pay off over £1 billion of construction costs for the Queensferry Crossing it is highly unlikely that they would be introduced anywhere else in Scotland such as Corran where a bridge could obviously be built at a much lower cost.

[KeithW]

It's not about GDP though, but the actual cost of building the tunnels. The Hindhead tunnel apparently cost around £155m per km - admittedly as a dual carriageway, so let's say it would have 'only' been around £100m per km for a single carriageway. That's still 10 times more than the Faroe tunnel. The proposals for relatively short tunnels on the A9 at Dunkeld were being quoted as over £1 billion. Why can these other countries build tunnels so cheaply compared to the UK? Less in the way of red tape, etc?

With respect you cannot build a tunnel if you dont have the money so GDP definitely is a factor as is the the reality that Norway as a nation has accrued a sovereign wealth fund by investing its income from Petroleum revenues. The value of that fund is in excess of 1 trillion US dollars.

The cost of building a tunnel is dependent on many factors including the geology, length and environmental mitigation required.
In the Faroes the S2 Eysturoy tunnel was built in favourable geological conditions and is not especially cheap at 250 million euros for 7 km. If you use a TBM that alone will cost around £ 50 million and that is not recoverable. This is why at Hindhead they used mechanical excavators.

Geologically the Hindhead was pretty much a worse case scenario with weak beds of clay, sand and heavily fractured rock with underground streams. This makes tunnelling a slow and potentially dangerous process requiring the walls be spray lined with concrete as the tunnels were being dug , similar conditions were found by the Victorian railway engineers with the Box Hill and Severn Rail tunnels. The 1.8 mile Box tunnel took 3 years to build and 100 men died in the process of building it. The Severn rail tunnel is 4.5 miles and took 14 years to build and they still have to pump 50 million litres per day of water out of the tunnel.

The cost of the Hindhead project was also inflated by the environmental remediation of the old road that involved removing the old road surface, landscaping and planting 200,000 trees along its route.

[KeithW]

Norway is resource rich having lots of petroleum and hydro electric power - statistics tell the story
Country GDP per Capita
Norway $73,450
Scotland $43,740

The bottom line is Norway has more money to spend.

Since Scotland and Norway's funding and reporting models are vastly different that's hardly surprising.
Since the UKs revenue generation from Norway is structured different that's also hardly surprising.
And also depending on which figures you've used that may or may not include Oil and Gas;
Scottish figures always have the caveat *Disnae include Oil and Gas, attached to them, it's seen as a UK wide resource.
Amazingly Malt Whisky makes an appearance on London's figures too, the manufacture may be geographically protected that doesn't stop it being treated as a London Export.

Figures aren't collected in a manner that allows you to figure it out either.

Handling for the UK, the oil paid off loads of debts but then the UK went on an epic spending spree with general revenues in general, and finds itself skint again.
But instead of raising more revenue from what it does take money in from, it cut that and then massivley cut what's spent by government too, but is still digging deeper into debt.

What's significant about Norway is they used the oil money to pay off debts and then started using it to invest.
Their fund is now weaning itself off of the oil revenues as the North sea starts to get more difficult to extract from.

According to the Scottish Government The figures for both are on the same basis - Gross Domestic Product and include whisky oil agricultural products and manufactured goods

Exports of most manufactured products are estimated using data from the Monthly Business
Survey for manufacturing industries, with additional data used for specific products based
on administrative data sources (refined petroleum products and scotch whisky). The
estimates of export sales by each industry are matched to the principal products of those
industries, and benchmarked to the annual national accounts totals for exports of these
products to the rest of the world in the latest Supply & Use Tables.

As for Norway the fund no longer invests in oil and gas but still benefits from domestic production and has 11 years of proven reserves which is almost double that of the UK and has a very active oil and gas industry. The state oil company which recently changed its name from Statoil to Equinor was recently rated as the eleventh largest oil and gas company and the twenty-sixth largest company, regardless of industry, by profit in the world. It is a simple fact that Norway has a higher GDP than the UK and a huge reserve of cash.

[djw1981]

And as the SNP story goes, Norway chose to maintain their tax level and thus bank the revenue from North Sea Oil and Gas, the UK government chose to give tax cuts in the 1980s and squandered it.

The Uk government story is different, since that low tax environment allowed the economy to change from heavy industry towards services.

The truth lies between the two.

[Burns]

[Berk]

It’s closer to Norway, you know.

[Herned]

With respect you cannot build a tunnel if you dont have the money so GDP definitely is a factor as is the the reality that Norway as a nation has accrued a sovereign wealth fund by investing its income from Petroleum revenues. The value of that fund is in excess of 1 trillion US dollars.

The cost of building a tunnel is dependent on many factors including the geology, length and environmental mitigation required.
In the Faroes the S2 Eysturoy tunnel was built in favourable geological conditions and is not especially cheap at 250 million euros for 7 km. If you use a TBM that alone will cost around £ 50 million and that is not recoverable. This is why at Hindhead they used mechanical excavators.

What has the amount of money available got to do with the cost? Obviously they can afford to do more but it has no bearing on project costs. If anything, costs will be higher in a richer country as labour costs will almost certainly be higher.

The Eysturoy Tunnel is 11.5km long, and the costs I can find are between £110m and £130m. So about £10-13m/km. Obviously some costs are fixed so it doesn't scale exactly. Tunnels like this and in Norway are usually built by drill and blast, which is much cheaper than using a TBM. Scotland has lots of similar geology, stable igneous rocks... so similar construction methods should be possible. The whole reason I mentioned the comparison with Norway or the Faroes is that costs should be broadly similar, but when e.g. a ~10km tunnel along Loch Lomond was suggested it was estimated at £4bn... The Norwegians could practically tunnel across the North Sea for that sort of money!