On Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:11:50 +0100, "Neil Arlidge" <[email protected]> wrote:
>Adrian Stott wrote: >> On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:36:40 +0100, "Neil Arlidge" >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Following our brief trippet en France, my vote for mothballing is >>> for the Scarpe Superior, followed by the Somme. >> >> Poor choice. >> Adrian > >err...good choice, and example of what happens elsewhere. <snip of maintenance problems on the Scarpe> Although the Scarpe Superieur is a cul-de-sac, I'm afraid your reasoning is circular. A. The reasone the Sup is being under-maintained is that few pleasure craft use it. B. The reason few pleasure craft us it is that you can't navigate into Arras basin. C. The reason you can't get into Arras basin is that the Sup is under-maintained. D. Go to A. To solve the problem, I believe it's necessary to break the circle. I think the answer is to reopen Arras basin, which should be a significant attraction to pleasure boaters. BTW, Robert Aickman used to call this problem "the oldest trick in the book", after, IIRC, the GWR used it to justify closing its canals after it had driven all the traffic away by doing no maintenance. <snip of lower Somme problems) >how long before the Somme Dept and its initial >enthusiam for their waterway, waivers? The French regions are being conned into taking over the waterways within their boundaries which are no longer commercially profitable. Increasingly, this is the Freycinet ones. VNF has AIUI presented this transfer in unduly rosy hues, by, for example, showing the books for the past few years and arguing "look how little we've had to spend on these waterways". Of course, the low spend produced much less maintenance than was needed, so is not a valid estimate the real average maintenance costs, and of course as a result of the low spend there are now major arrears too. Some regions have swallowed this; others apparently are being effectively forced to. Brittany, which took over its waterways several years back, is rumoured to be trying to return them. Even more worrying is that such balkanisation may mean the end of consistent waterway standards, and also maybe opportunistic gauge reductions. Not a good approach at all. But there isn't a French eqauivalent of IWA to complain about it (although DBA is gradually moving in that direction, in concert with local French associations). >With the over manning and rescourcing of VNF, I would think they would be a >good candidate for taking over BW? :-) Maybe the other way around? VNF is now threatened with cuts (sound familiar), while in the past BW used to act as a consultant to it as UK had started to use its waterways for leisure quite a while before the French were faced with it. OTOH, VNF now has a Director for Pleasure Cruising (or something like), so maybe the tide is turning (to use a possibly inappropriate metaphot)? Adrian Adrian Stott Tel. UK (0)7956-299966
