|
|
Peter's Waterways Blog
Another Locking Challenge This is an expansion of part of an article first published in IWA West Riding's Milepost in January 2019, about being a Navigation Authority and the control of stoppages and the understanding of their impact. An additional stoppage has appeared recently on the popular Shropshire Union at a time when it would be at its highest demand. |
Click to read full issue |
|
As an example of a closure that could surely have been avoided, C&RT have this year allowed some works in Birmingham to extend from a January start to May, well beyond the end of the Winter Works Programme; they tell us that an ‘alternative route’ is available. It might work for navigators concerned only with the beginning and end of their journey, but it denies appreciating the section of canal, in this case Dudley Port Junction to Factory Junction, as a delight in itself. C&RT is best placed to explain and argue for canals to stay open, when the statutory undertakers (gas, electricity, water supply, sewage, telecomms, ...) want their works to fit with their own schedules. They all have different rights to insist on their timetables and I understand the challenges in keeping our canals open |
|
|
|
Later in the year, there was a serious leakage in the cill at Wheaton Aston lock on the Shropshire Union Canal. Canal and River Trust have announced a week's closure to fix it starting on 31July. This is exactly the period when the maximum number of navigators wish to use the canal, and there are a dozen days between the announcement and the closure, to accommodate, so says the notice says two weekends of boats heading for a festival. We have to wonder how the temporary repairs can extend into the beginning of the school holiday peak usage, but not the end. We ought to have additional information and reassurance that this is wholly unavoidable, and something more than a convenience for C&RT and their contractors.
|
|
Two emails sent at about the same time |
Here are the emailed and website details for comparison. The emails give an end-date and show that it's intended as a week-long closure, but only one of the the emails mentions which lock it is talking about.
The website gives good information about which lock is closed but there is no end-date. You couldn't make it up There is an important policy issue behind all this. Failures of the waterway infrastructure come across a wide spectrum in terms of urgency. It may be a catastrophic failure similar to the Middlewich breach: the canal is closed immediately, and there needs to be a large and expensive project to repair it. At the other extreme, a leak, maybe in a lock, can be patched-up with a temporary repair and a more permanent fix is likely to be scheduled with other works within the Winter Works Programme. This stoppage is somewhere between these: the canal is kept open for a couple of weekends for boat movements to festivals of which the C&RT are aware, and then closed for a whole week during the height of the holiday season when it will cause maximum disruption to the school-holiday hireboats, which have the potential for introducing to the canals those younger people who we all need for the future. If the failure can be kept at bay for a fortnight, why not until the end of the school holidays? Peter Scott @peterjohnscott |
|