Bridges or tunnels crossing the Firth of Clyde and four sea lochs are being considered in a project to revitalise the Cowal Peninsula – as well as a railway station at Kilcreggan.
The Cowal Fixed Link Working Group has put forward a series of options, which include routes over or under Loch Long, the Gareloch, the Holy Loch and Loch Fyne.
A new railway line with stations at Kilcreggan, Strone, Sandbank and Dunoon, is one possibility being mooted, although all the routes are said to be illustrative only.
Maps also show road traffic from Cowal joining the B833 in Kilcreggan as one option; when asked about the impact of substantial extra traffic on the Rosneath Peninsula, the working group’s chairman David McKenzie said of this route: “The majority of the team we are working with do not support or envisage a road option; a sustainable rail option is the preference.”
A total of six crossings are considered:
- Dunoon town centre to the Cloch Lighthouse
- Dunoon town centre to Gourock railway station
- Dunoon to Helensburgh via Sandbank, Strone and Kilcreggan
- A ‘Cowal bridge’
- Dunoon to Rothesay
- Dunoon to Lochgilphead
Mr McKenzie said a railway tunnel to Gourock had been ruled out as ‘incredibly expensive’, with a possible cost of £2bn due to the depth of the Clyde, so the team had started to look at starter routes.
The cost f this could not be justified with Cowal’s population of 12,000 though, so the aim is to quadruple that figure to 50,000, with the private sector leading development and land coming from the Forestry Commission.
“The idea of a link from Cowal to the central belt has been around for over 100 years. – an Act of Parliament for a railway line was put through back in the 1880s,” he said.
“In October 2014 Argyll and Bute Council held an economic forum in Dunoon – the information presented for Cowal was literally catastrophic, it was one of only two areas in Scotland forecast to have a decrease in population.
“A group of businessmen, community councillors and councillors got together. We said that we think more dramatic things can be done.”
With both Western Ferries and Argyll Ferries crossing the Clyde to Cowal, Dunoon is served by well over 100 ferry sailings a day, but Mr McKenzie said: “In Dunoon, if the ferry does not run the schools and banks don’t open.
“It was obvious to us that making better ferries was a good thing to do, but it wasn’t going to make the step change.”
He stressed that the route options were illustrative and no engineering work had been done to determine the exact lines or whether a bridge or tunnel would be the more appropriate link; no public money had been spent in creating the maps.
Asked whether the naval bases at Faslane and Coulport could lead to objections from the MoD, Mr McKenzie said a Royal Navy representative had been invited to stakeholder meetings but had yet to attend, while the Loch Long option was not assumed to be a bridge: “The prevailing winds could mean frequent closures. This particular link segment would probably be a tunnel.”
A bridge over the Gareloch was mooted by Argyll and Bute Council at the earliest stages of consultation into its 2002 Structure Plan, but the link between Rhu and Rosneath as rejected almost immediately – the Helensburgh Advertiser’s front page inevitably dubbed it ‘A bridge too far’,
The working group wrote to candidates for the Argyll and Bute seat in this month’s Scottish Parliament election and all four said they would commit to it – MSP Mike Russell is chair of the stakeholder group, which also includes Transport Scotland and Highlands & Islands Enterprise.
The next steps will be a public consultation exercise and presentation of a petition to the Scottish Parliament, while support from Argyll and Bute Council is sen as vital, but this decision has been delayed.
An update paper from the group acknowledges that some concerns have been raised: “In particular a road link, as distinct from rail, would provide 24/7 access to the Cowal and Rosneath peninsulas.
“Would this change the characteristics of the area such as security, pace of life etc?
“Would the route of any link affect the visual or other environmental aspects, e.g. noise?”
Images of all the route options being considered are here (click to enlarge):
Perhaps this would have made a great April Fool story Can’t see it ever happening in our lifetime
It does seem hard to take seriously, but the MSP and HIE are behind it…
Seriously, what’s in this for people in Kilcreggan , Cove or Rosneath apart from being part of a fast track for people desperate to leave Dunoon? the idea of a train station here is ludicrous. People in Dunoon seem to have unrealistic expectations, to put it mildly. I’d swap their ferry service for ours any day. How many millions were wasted on that linkspan in Dunoon? How many times has it been used by a car ferry?
Another great idea, but is it not a bit pie in the sky? Yes, Cowal (not forgetting other parts of Argyll) does have issues with de-population. O.K. the Dunoon vehicular service does not sail into the town centres, but neither does the Largs to Cumbrae service, or the Colintraive to Rhubodoch service. Yes, Bute has de-population issues, but does Cumbrae? Maybe if the Victorians had built a railway in Argyll it may have worked, but now? To be honest if the Dunoon ferry action group had put pressure on the government, we could have had passenger ferries that could sail in most weathers, like they do in other parts of the U.K. and throughout the world, in similar sea conditions to the Clyde, and with fit for purpose landing facilities, not linkspans that are designed for vehicular ferries. Several years have been wasted since it became clear that no operator was interested in operating a town centre vehicular service. If you check various information outlets, it seems that normally when a new passenger service starts (like Dunoon) passenger numbers rise on average 15% in the first few years, but because Dunoon’s service was cobbled together using the wrong type of ferries, and landing facilities, this has not happened here. Having Transport Scotland involved in this does not emit good vibes, given the state of our passenger service. If Cowal’s population is to increase to 50.000 where are all the additional houses going to be built? Think of at least three times more houses than there is at present! New tunnels and bridges – would this mean tolls being re-introduced again? Yes, all this may be possible, but will need a government or private investors with very deep pockets.
I wonder what the current passenger numbers are for journeys on foot from Glasgow to Dunoon. These would include journeys via train and passenger ferry, via bus and passenger ferry, and via McGills bus service. These figures would maybe show if a railway line would initially be likely to be sustainable in the long term. Stations in cities have been closed over the years, never mind new ones in villages with populations counted in a few hundred in places like Kilgreggan, Strone, and Sandbank, which cannot even support bus services without being subsidised. With fixed links to the Helensburgh area, how would passengers get to the Inverclyde hospital, or students get to the James Watt college?
A Dunoon-Cloch tunnel should pay for itself, with a lot of extra development capital for housing/industry to increase traffic levels the Cowal bridge might make sense but the other schemes are non-starters on cost grounds.
I’m sure that this option has been dismissed due to the high cost, because of the depth of the river here. Not sure if the Cowal residents would want to be so close and
accessible to/from the Greenock anti-social behaviour. Many positive points for this option, but it would surely affect many local businesses, as shoppers would no doubt be looking at spending their cash more in Gourock, Greenock, Port Glasgow and surrounding areas. We need to be careful what we wish for.
Is being accessible through a tolled tunnel instead of a ferry going to increase anti-social behaviour appreciably? Not sure I agree with that. The main effects of a fixed link with a toll would be no waiting time to travel, reduced price of goods and services in local shops, access not being subject to inclement weather and 24hr access for emergency services; the time taken to get from Dunoon to the shops in Greenock wouldn’t be much less than it is now, nor would it cost a lot less.
Yes, agree with your thinking on this. The issue now is if this option has been withdrawn, who would want a fixed link to Kilgreggan and Helensburgh? No hospital or college there, but there is a Waitrose! Train journey from Helensburgh to Glasgow is about forty minutes, so similar to Gourock. Given that, the roads from Cove through Helensburgh, and leaving Helensburgh are poor, so new road needed from Cove to Loch Lomonside. Same goes for roads from Dunoon to Sandbank, and Strone. Apart from new tunnels, major road infrastructure is needed as well.
A fixed link at Rhu combined with further links across to Strone and Dunoon is certainly ambitious and I suspect the cost would kill it stone dead.
The drive from Cove to Glasgow would be via the A82 on Loch Lomond and not via Helensburgh. The A817 is one of the best non dual roads in Scotland having been built from scratch in the 90’s. A rail/road Bridge at Ardentinny would be the most economic solution and given the £300M+ spent on the Borders railway I would think its not completely out of the question.
Oh please! reality-check time – put back good ferry connections between Helensburgh-Kilcreggan-Gourock, esp w/ cruise liners showing up weekly at Greenock, whose passengers might not want to get on a tour bus to the Burrell, but get on a wee boat to H’burgh. Tunnels under the Clyde, this far away from Glasgow? Dreamland …
A tunnel from Inverclyde to Dunoon would be about 5 kilometres long. Taking the highest quoted cost of construction in Norway(£6-12k per metre from the Norwegian Tunnelling Society) 5km would cost £60m. For example the cost of a 7km tunnel in the Shetlands was estimated by their council at £86m 4 years ago.
The combined car traffic of the two ferry services in 2010 was 625,400 cars; combining this with the discount cost per journey of £8 gives an income of £5m. Combined commercial vehicle and coach traffic was 36,500; on his blog Councillor Breslin recently quoted an HGV ticket for Western Ferries as being £138 one way, on the basis that the car discount rate is slightly less than half the full fare let’s say the discount fare is £65 giving a subtotal of £2.37m and a total revenue of £7.37m. Allowing for a 1% of capital cost annually for maintenance of the tunnel that gives repayment in just under 10 years, assuming no growth in traffic or toll charges and a loan rate of 5%. I don’t think it’s likely that traffic would not grow if a tunnel was built and growth is likely to increase further if the toll was removed after the loan payoff, all achieved with no public subsidy beyond access to cheap government borrowing. If the £3m subsidy provided to Argyll Ferries annually is added to the sums it becomes more affordable still.
Very interesting calculations db. I’m sure the group that are pursuing this, quoted around £2 billion for this crossing, but I may be wrong. I’m sure many would be happy to pay tolls for a short period, but is the new Forth crossing going to be a toll bridge, or is it being financed differently? Are Holyrood likely to go for this idea, or will they be content to continue to fund Cal Mac until doomsday? Interesting times.
I hesitate to criticise their costing but that puts it at an eyewatering £0.4m per metre; for comparison the Channel Tunnel cost £0.5m per metre corrected for inflation and that’s 3 very large tunnels bored through what was described as the toughest geology possible. It makes a bridge over Loch Long with sufficient airdraft to accept HMS Queen Elizabeth look cheap.
Shame to see all the negativity on here.
These are all good ideas. Norway has 750km of tunnels and Scotland’s longest is 762 metres…
The Highland Council commissioned engineers to look at the cost of tunnels at Stromeferry and the figure was £56,700 per metre. Information here: http://www.highland.gov.uk/info/1523/transport_and_streets/104/stromeferry_bypass
Would those living in Cowal and other parts of Argyll, really want to be yet another suburban area? A lot of people who have moved to Cowal have done so to escape the city, and large town life. They knew they were moving to a rural area, which involved a long road journey, or a ferry crossing. Dunoon hasn’t suddenly moved to a different location. The amount of out of town trades vans, that I see travelling daily to and from Dunoon on the ferry, is increasing month on month. So the argument that fixed links would help local businesses, may not always be the case. Local residents must be given more facts about these plans, and more importantly must have a say before any bridge, tunnel, or rail track is given the go ahead.