Liverpool waterfront

[the golden vision]

Just to add, my post wasn't meant as a criticism of Golden. He's passionate about the area and certainly doesn't court popularity.

[golden66]

My points aren't my own facts but they are facts backed by professional evidence and thats all that matters whether Martin Sensible, Go Awayo etc. like it or not.

You can't have your own facts and ones own opinion carries no weight without factual evidence.

[Awayo]

Originally Posted by Martin S

It never ceases to amaze me how on the Liverpool forum we can squeeze the maximum amount of negativity out of almost any news story.

The Port of Liverpool is about to embark on the biggest expansion since the construction of Seaforth Dock in the Seventies but somehow all this is to benefit Manchester.

Peel is a company based in Manchester, so consequently, it is assumed that all of its decisions must benefit Manchester. However, which city council objected more to the construction of the Trafford Centre? Which airport is thought to have suffered the most from Peel's acquisition and expansion of Liverpool John Lennon Airport and which councils are most critical of Peel's plans for Liverpool and Wirral Waters?

Peel is a company seeking to maximise its profits that is clear, what is unclear is that they work in a way that specifically benefits Manchester.

Awayo tries to align Peel's profit making objectives with the Manchester-centric regionalist public sector agenda. However, that is a strange argument for a Liverpool forummer. If the best way for a firm to maximise its profits is to concentrate its activities on Manchester then isn't that an admission that the Manchester-centric agenda is the correct one - the one that is going to lead to the greatest prosperity for the North West? The argument that we have always had on the Liverpool forum is that, free of statist intervention, Liverpool would prosper.

OK, then there is the ship canal. I actually work not far from the ship canal (not for Peel I might add) and every lunchtime, weather permitting, I take a walk down to the canal bank.

The Manchester Ship Canal is one of the wonders of nineteenth century engineering and England's only full size ship canal. To let such an asset go to waste is, in many ways criminal. Of course, we would probably like it more if we could call it the Liverpool Ship Canal or even the Runcorn Ship Canal but it is there and we need to use it.

As Tom has pointed out, the ship canal has limitations and, though I don't have his knowledge of shipping, I think I can make an educated guess on how the Peel barge service will work.

Containers will be unloaded from ships at Seaforth and then will need to be transported to the barges and loaded onto them there. Once sufficient barges have been loaded, they will be marshalled together and a towing vessel attached. They will then need to be pushed or pulled across the Mersey as far as Eastham where they will encounter the first lock of the Ship Canal. From then on, they will travel at around 6 - 7 mph along the length of the ship canal, negotiating up to another four locks until they arrive at Port Salford.

The Mersey Ferry Ship Canal cruises take about six hours to get to Manchester. I doubt very much that the barge traffic will be any faster and, given the difficulty of negotiating locks with several barges in tow, I can see them being much slower.

When they get to their destination, they will again be craned off the barges and, if they are going to go further will need to be craned onto road or rail vehicles.

Comparing that to the simplicity of craning a container onto a lorry at Liverpool, which could be in Manchester less than an hour later, it is quite clear that the Ship Canal option, though valuable, is not the be all and end all of everything.

In the case of rail, which has benefited at Liverpool by the reopening of the Olive Mount chord, it is difficult to see how the Ship Canal would make much difference. The rail transport of containers is most competitive over long distances (in excess of 100 miles) so there would not be much of a market to Manchester. However a container train heading for the West Midlands could be loaded at Liverpool and be in Birmingham before a Ship Canal barge would be at Warrington with some hours sailing ahead before it reached Port Salford.

So, yes, I do believe that there is an opportunity here to use the environmentally friendly Ship Canal for a certain part of the traffic from Liverpool but that is in addition to extremely competitive other means of transport. Nobody is going to force container owners to use barges and the Ship Canal.

What is most important though is to recognise that the more competitive transport arteries there are from Liverpool, the greater the business through the port will be. Manchester is part of Liverpool's hinterland and the easier that it is served the better. But it is quite clear that the city region with the best access to the port will be Liverpool.

Much of this is straw man stuff, Martin and not in actual response to my posts. And they were clear enough I think and so I refer you back to them.

You analysis of the mechanics and economics of getting cargo up the canal is interesting though. Thanks for that.

[Martin S]

Originally Posted by Awayo

Much of this is straw man stuff, Martin and not in actual response to my posts. And they were clear enough I think and so I refer you back to them.

You analysis of the mechanics and economics of getting cargo up the canal is interesting though. Thanks for that.

Awayo, It is enough for me to be responding to the points that you have made rather then inventing fictional ones that I have to respond to as well!

To expand on what I was saying yesterday. A few years ago, the Olive Mount chord was re-opened and that allowed trains to travel directly to Manchester much more quickly than via the Ship Canal but there was no fuss about that.

What actually stops a private firm from developing a logistics centre at any place that it wants to? A private siding by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway could serve a major centre with direct links to the M6.

I remember years ago Tony Sebo talking about the significance of the Albert Dock warehouses in the development of the port. These great warehouses - and others built subsequently - represented a change in how goods were handled.

As I understood it, up to that time, goods were unloaded from ships direct to carts or dockside transit sheds from whence they were taken into town, stored in small warehouses, and distributed by local wholesalers.

The advent of the great warehouses allowed the bulk storage of goods at the quayside from whence they would be taken in bulk via railway to Manchester, Wigan, Birmingham or wherever needed them, bypassing the port's industry.

So maybe this way of operating has been around far longer than Peel.

[WingTips]

Any updates from the Cruise terminal thread recently?