From Paul Blampied.
WITH the pull out of the ferry company HD for the second winter in a row, isn’t it time that Economic Development looked into ways of encouraging the ferry companies to operate?

If ferries only make a good profit during the summer period, then have to eat into this profit to see them through the lean winter months, it’s not surprising there’s a strong temptation to shut up shop during the quiet, loss making months.

Rather than relying on service level contracts that do nothing to stem the ferry company losses, why not instead encourage travel by finding ways of reducing costs the ferry companies incur during the winter?

Reduce port, passenger and ramp fees during the winter to a token level, say 50p per passenger. The lost revenue could be got back by a slight increase on the far higher number of summer travellers.

This would encourage the ferry companies to come up with reduced fare special offers in the off peak seasons.
The resulting increase in off season visitors could only be of benefit to the Island.

At the very least this would reduce ferry losses during the winter months by smoothing out the drop off in travel and reduce the attractiveness to any ferry operator of stopping their service for the winter.
The Castle,
Common Lane,
St Helier.