A £7m design for a new pontoon and extended breakwater in Dunoon has been rejected by the public.
Less than a third of people supported the preferred option for Dunoon Harbour in a consultation run for Argyll and Bute Council by consultants Mott MacDonald.
A separate consultation into £9.3m plans for Kilcreggan Harbour closes on Sunday – both designs were drawn up to accommodate new 40-metre ferries intended for the Dunoon route and potentially for Kilcreggan as well.
Read more: Public rejected new Dunoon ferry designs, but survey results were kept secret
The preferred design, ‘option 1d’, pictured below, would see the current linkspan – which cost £5.4m – removed and a pontoon berth installed with access via a gangway.
The breakwater would be extended and there would be a long gangway onto a pontoon, which the council says improves access for passengers and navigational safety for the ferry.
Of the 222 respondents who completed the survey, 32% said they agreed with that option, but 53% said they preferred another option and 15 said they didn’t know.
Most of the survey respondents were from Dunoon (61%), with 29% from elsewhere on the Cowal Peninsula – roughly half said they were regular commuters.
Mott MacDonald said most of the people who preferred an alternative design had done so because they thought it might accommodate a car ferry service in the future, while a third of those who said they didn’t know commented that they wanted a new car ferry service.
The results were expected to be given to councillors at last week’s meeting of the authority’s harbour board but have now been released following a Freedom of Information request.
The Kilcreggan Harbour survey is on the council’s website – a 1:100 scale model of the preferred option ‘4a’ is available in Cove Burgh Hall on Friday from 10am to 1pm and from 10-11am on Saturday.
Leave a Reply