On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:01:37 +0100, Nick <[email protected]> wrote:
>I am, as so often, more than a little baffled by this. As ever, I'm pleased to help. >Let's double check. It doesn't matter at all how much you cruise, it >still costs them just the same. > >But if there's a bit of waterway 500 miles away, that you can never get >to because - say - you don't get enough leave each year - you should pay >more for the privilege of potentially cruising it. I think you've raised another version of the key question, which I believe is: "What are you buying when you pay for a boat licence?" Whatever it is you buy, you surely should be able to buy only as much of it as you can use. It can't be right to force people to buy more than they need. What if a restaurant said "You must buy dinners for four people, even if you are only a couple"? Or a shoe shop to say "You must buy a pair of size 9 shoes whenever you buy a pair of size 12 ones". I think what we should buying is "unlimited access to the waterways the boat is able to use, during a specified period". I think it isn't right that we should be forced also to buy access to waterways we aren't able to use, because (e.g.) their locks are smaller than our boats. >So someone with a 62 foot narrow boat at - say - Bishop's Stortford - >who goes out for 2 weeks a year should pay more than someone with a 50 >foot barge who goes up and down the river every day? If we're buying access, yes. As I've said, the marginal cost to the navigation authority of usage (/km) is effectively nil, so there really isn't any justificationfor charges that vary with usage. >And when - say - Tewitfield locks are restored the narrow boat should >then pay more as a result? Also, yes. Which would provide BW with an incentive to back restorations and new waterways. Isn't that what we want? >Mind you, I can see why you want to close the Slough Arm - under your >scheme it would benefit all of us to campaign to close all waterways we >aren't planning to travel on. If the Slough branch were in good condition, and more interesting, I might well use it. Trevor wrote: >On 26/06/2010 10:20, Adrian Stott wrote: >> My only proviso is that the charge for a boat should depend on the >> length of its cruising range. >Totally impractical on terms of IT costs alone Fortunately, not so. There are already databases that give the dimensions of each (length of) waterway, and therefore can tell which ones a given vessel can use. It isn't difficult with such databases to have a program which answers the question "If a boat of X dimensions is at Y location, what is the length of its cruising range?". A random check to verify claimed boat dimensions might be needed, I suppose. Hey, there's tradition for you -- a return to gauging. Adrian Adrian Stott Tel. UK (0)7956-299966
