Decision sought on Kintyre summer ferry service

Campaigners are calling for a speedy decision on whether to keep an experimental ferry service going.

A three-year trial of the summer-only service between Ardrossan and Campbeltown ends later this month.

Business and community leaders in Kintyre want the Scottish government and Transport Scotland to reach a quick decision on whether to keep it going.

Transport Scotland has said a decision will be made as soon as possible after the trial ends.

The three-year trial began in May 2013. There are three sailings each week in each direction over the summer months.

The aim was to try to see what sort of demand there was for a service and whether it might help boost the economy in Kintyre.

It is the first regular public link between Kintyre and Ayrshire for decades and provides an alternative to the 136-mile road journey between Campbeltown and Glasgow.

Businesses and community leaders in Kintyre believe the service, operated by CalMac, has made a difference to the area and has the potential to make even more of an impact if it becomes permanent.

One business which relies on the tourist market told BBC Scotland that a substantial proportion of their customers were using the ferry and that many might not have come otherwise.

They also noted that many outside the area were still unaware of the link and that some other customers had only found out about it after they had arrived.

In recent years efforts have been made to revive Kintyre's economy which had been in the doldrums for many years. Two derelict hotels were turned into luxury venues and a new golf course has been opened at Machrihanish.

Transport Scotland say a decision on the way forward would be taken as quickly as possible after the conclusion of this year's service.

Ultimately the decision will be made by Transport Minister Derek Mackay.

A Transport Scotland spokesman said he hoped passenger numbers would rise this year as a result of price cuts brought about by the extension of the Scottish government's Road Equivalent Tariff Scheme to the route.

Last summer 11,350 passengers used the service - a 15% rise on 2013 - along with 2,200 cars.

Campaigners have been reassured that disruption to this year's sailings as a result of technical issues, unusually bad weather and industrial action, will be taken into account when this year's passenger statistics are evaluated.

Consultants have been carrying out a detailed survey to help Transport Scotland evaluate the pilot.

They have been looking at things such as how often individual travellers use the service, whether they would have made the same journey using another form of transport if the ferry was not running and how much money they spent in Kintyre.

Because Kintyre is not an island, the ferry service is not a lifeline in the way most other CalMac services are. It simply provides an alternative - and some believe better - way of getting to the area.

The vessel used for the service is mainly used to provide an enhanced summer service on the popular Ardrossan to Brodick route.

This means that any changes to the Campbeltown timetable would need to be agreed by all the stakeholders to make sure Arran did not lose out.

One local concern is that there may be no service next summer - but that the service may start again in the future after the next contract to provide ferry services around the west coast comes into operation towards the end of next year.

One reason for the nervousness in Kintyre is the memory of a failed attempt to establish a car ferry service between Campbeltown and Ballycastle in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s. Its was run by a private company which received no subsidy.

The old Scottish Office - which ran internal affairs within Scotland before devolution - told CalMac to sell the vessel to the operator, Sea Containers, which was obliged to run the service for three years in return.

After the three year period ended, the company discontinued the service.

Efforts by both the Scottish and UK governments to re-start the service proved unsuccessful although a private operator now runs a small-scale passenger service.

Some caution against comparing the two pointing out that CalMac and the government would not have opened the Ardrossan to Campbeltown route unless they wanted it to succeed.