Campaigns Update

CAMPAIGNING WITH YOU

Freight on the Aire & Calder and support for residential boaters are among some of the issues we’ve been campaigning on with your help. Here’s how we’ve been doing on these and other affairs…

Hammersmith Bridge reopens

Hammersmith Bridge, which was closed for nearly a year, has now reopened to all boats, pedestrians and cyclists.

In May, IWA joined the Company of Watermen & Lightermen of the River Thames in calling for unrestricted navigation under Hammersmith Bridge to be allowed at the earliest possible date, in a letter to the transport minister, Baroness Vere.

When the bridge was condemned as dangerous and closed in August 2020, no boats were allowed to pass under this iconic structure on the tidal Thames. A traffic-light-controlled system for booked passages for vessels that met strict criteria was introduced, although transit was still severely restricted. This had significant impact on passenger boats and other commercial operators. It also restricted privately owned boats from travelling down the river into London, or completing the Thames Ring.

Delays in carrying out engineering checks added to the slow progress in reopening the bridge to traffic over and under it. The closure caused considerable hardship, inconvenience and cost to commercial operators. These businesses had already been badly impacted by the Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions over the last year, and at least one company failed as a direct result of the bridge closure.

The closure caused this year’s Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race to be relocated to the River Ouse at Ely, the first time it hasn’t taken place on the Thames since World War II.

The letter, which was also co-signed by RYA, British Marine and the Commercial Boat Operators Association among others, asked the minister to consider some practical measures to allow navigation to resume under the bridge as soon as possible. For example, once the bridge has been made safe, allowing boats to use the river while repairs are being carried out, in the same way that traffic was able to continue during the construction of the Blackfriars Station extension over the Thames.

In responding to the joint letter, Baroness Vere was hopeful that, subject to a Hammersmith & Fulham Council inspection report due at the end of June, the bridge could be open to all river traffic by early July 2021.

The Department for Transport announced that it is willing to pay a third of the cost of getting the bridge reopened, with Transport for London and Hammersmith & Fulham Council also being expected to pay a third each. The closure highlights the importance of long-term funding for repairs and maintenance of historic bridges and other heritage infrastructure.

The bridge reopened to cyclists, pedestrians and all boat traffic in midJuly. However, traffic signals are still in operation and will prevent river passage if sensors on the bridge detect a problem.

Narrowboats pass underneath Hammersmith Bridge.

North East waterways freight traffic in jeopardy

IWA West Riding Branch, along with IWA Navigation Committee and the Inland Waterways Freight Group, has been raising concerns about the disruption to freight traffic on the waterways of the North East since the beginning of the year.

Commercial traffic had returned to the Aire & Calder last autumn with a weekly run from Hull to Knostrop, which had the potential to replace 17 lorry journeys for every barge fully loaded with aggregate. Following a breach and the closure of the canal on 20th December, this traffic is now in serious jeopardy, not helped by the length of time that the repairs are taking. Oil traffic to Rotherham is in abeyance and the ongoing delay also endangers the development of the Port of Leeds.

The provisional mid-August date for reopening means that the canal will have been closed to navigation for eight months. Dredging needs to be carried out to allow these barges to carry at full capacity, which is necessary for them to operate economically.

Canal & River Trust has a statutory duty to make the Aire & Calder Navigation principally available for the carriage of freight, but at the same time has to juggle its finite resources.

As well as asking CRT for assurances that everything possible is being done to allow this waterway to reopen as soon as possible, we are calling on Government to make more money available for essential works such as dredging. More freight on the waterways would also help towards the Government’s zero carbon agenda.

CRT estimates that the breach will cost around £3m to repair. This is just one of several major breaches and culvert collapses over recent years. With more regular extreme weather and climate change, things are not going to get any easier for CRT and other navigation authorities with responsibilities for waterway infrastructure that’s over 200 years old.

We will continue to lobby Government for sufficient funding, so that navigation authorities can maintain and protect this vital network that contributes so much to the economy, health and wellbeing of the country.

Farndale H on its inaugural run on the Aire & Calder in October 2020. A breach put this route under threat just two months later.

Parliamentarians asked to support residential boaters

The latest meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Waterways, held as a video meeting on 8th June, allowed parliamentarians to hear about the challenges and opportunities of living afloat. Speakers from the Residential Boat Owners’ Association, National Bargee Travellers Association and Canal & River Trust gave presentations that highlighted areas where the Government could provide more support for those living on the waterways.

Michael Fabricant MP, chair of the group, led the meeting, which was attended by MPs and peers, officials from Defra and representatives of many waterway organisations and navigation authorities. Also attending were representatives from a number of new and established community mooring cooperatives.

The presentations and the lively discussion that followed identified a series of issues where more support from Government and other public bodies would be beneficial, including: n Making sure that health, social services or other local authority services are available and accessible to liveaboard communities n Better coordination between navigation authorities and planning authorities to allow a more constructive and positive response when residential mooring developments are being considered n Support and facilitation for setting up more boater-managed community or cooperative-style moorings n Better support for reducing the impact of anti-social behaviour in inner-city locations n Support for navigation authorities in making waterway infrastructure more resilient to the impacts of climate change and extreme weather n Help for boaters to adapt to lowcarbon technology to support

Government net-zero carbon targets n Ensuring no adverse impacts on boaters’ legitimate way of life through the Police, Crime,

Sentencing & Courts Bill 2021 n Putting arrangements in place to rectify the missed opportunity in the 2021 Census to collect data about how many people are living on boats, which in turn will help to improve access to public services.

Michael Fabricant MP concluded the meeting by confirming that the APPGW would write to the Defra minister responsible for waterways, Rebecca Pow MP, to ask her to convene a meeting to discuss these issues with representatives from relevant organisations and government departments.

As well as providing the Secretariat for the APPGW, IWA also lobbies Government directly and will continue to press relevant Government departments and local authorities to make progress in these areas.

Spotlight on...

SUSTAINABLE BOATING RESEARCH

The University of Strathclyde is challenging how we approach greening Scotland’s canals in both the short and long term. Waterways talks to Dr Momchil Terziev and Dr Tahsin Tezdogan about their project and how IWA is giving them a helping hand

The Kelvin hydrodynamics laboratory, where the model replica of the Suez Canal was created.

First, tell us about the background to your project 'Decarbonising inland waterways transportation in the uk'

Dr Tahsin Tezdogan (TT): We are both naval architects in the Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean & Marine Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, and worked on shallow water hydrodynamics and inland waterways transportation while doing our PhD studies. We did some experiments to understand how much energy boats consume while travelling on canals and rivers and realised we could use this research to make the inland waterways sustainable for future generations. We’ve put together a proposal for a large, comprehensive project, which we are about to submit to the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council. If it is accepted, it will bring together a number of collaborators, one of which is IWA. Dr Momchil Terziev (MT): There are four academic institutions involved in the project, making up a large consortium that draws on lots of different expertise. Researchers from the University of Strathclyde, University of the Highlands & Islands, Newcastle University and Liverpool John Moores University are working across areas including electronics, marine engineering, freshwater biology and civil engineering in order to make it a success.

What are the aims of the project?

Secondly, we want to look at the future of propulsion technology, such as electricity or green fuels like hydrogen. And finally, we want to take complicated data about how boats move through the water and synthesise it in a very simple way so people can use that information to improve the performance of their vessels and make them more economical to run.

Have you done any preparatory experiments?

TT: We started with data collected by Scottish Canals and are ready to do more comprehensive numerical and experimental studies. One thing that we’ve already done was create a scale model of the Suez Canal and a container ship in the university’s Kelvin hydrodynamics lab to calculate the resistance of the vessel in the water. This helped us understand how much energy or fuel it would need to consume to maintain its speed. We also looked at ways to reduce resistance, which would in turn reduce emissions. We concluded that finding the optimal geometry for the canal bed is very important, and this can be applied to the UK’s inland waterways too.

Is that why you're looking at dredging?

TT: Yes, if we improve the way dredging is carried out and shape the canal bed in a more intentional way, we can reduce CO2 emissions for all types of inland waterways boats. We’re also looking at how dredging can be useful and how the sediment can be used in the economy again because at the moment it’s a very expensive process to dispose of the waste material.

Dr Momchil Terziev and Dr Tahsin Tezdogan visited canals across Scotland to see how their Suez Canal research could applied to the UK’s network of narrow inland waterways.

How are you approaching propulsion and the different technologies that could be used?

MT: Our team that’s looking at the propulsion side of things has split the problem into short-, medium- and long-term areas. In the next ten years, for example, you can’t expect that the 80,000 or so boats currently on the waterways will have been scrapped or converted with really expensive new engines. So they are looking at things like bio-fuels, which can immediately reduce CO2 emissions by a very large margin, to use in the short to medium term and allow boats to be phased out naturally as they reach the end of their lives. In the long term, we need to have strategies and technologies in place so that new generations of boats are already green.

One thing we’re asking is whether electric propulsion is right for boats or is there something better? Boats using batteries will need lots of power points for charging and these will be quite expensive to install. This makes sense on the road network because of the number of cars, but this doesn’t necessarily apply – or we’re not sure yet – to the inland waterways. There are alternatives such as hydrogen but that raises other questions about sourcing the fuel. TT: There may be scope for some hybrid technologies as well, combining solar power and hydrogen, for example. It needs to be researched thoroughly before we reach any conclusions, and we’re hoping to run tests together with IWA and other partners.

Your third aim is about using data to help improve vessel performance. How do you see that working?

MT: We know that if you drive your car in a certain way you can actually improve your fuel consumption, and it’s the same thing for boats. We aim to produce a smartphone app that people can have with them on their boat that communicates simple adjustments, like speed, in real time using data collected about water depth, for example. Similar to the way Google Maps tells you about speed limits and traffic on the roads. We will also tie this in with things like erosion so that boats can avoid damaging the canal’s infrastructure, and possibly even the behavioural patterns of boaters. We’re really looking at this in a holistic way so that we can improve many areas at the same time. If we could achieve a 10% to 15% improvement in vessel performance through the use of an app, that would be a pretty good outcome.

How has IWA been involved in your project?

TT: We came across the IWA Vision for Sustainable Propulsion online, which is a very comprehensive report about future technologies and reducing emissions on the inland waterways. Momchil and I contacted IWA’s Sustainable Propulsion subcommittee and set up a couple of meetings with them. MT: IWA gave us a lot of advice and feedback on the initial stages of our project and helped us to refine our ideas. They introduced us to some key partners, including Scottish Canals and Canal & River Trust, arranged some talks to spread the word about our work, and advised us on funding. TT: We also delivered a speech to the Scottish Parliament’s Cross Party Group on Recreational Boating & Marine Tourism with IWA’s assistance. The group was very receptive to our ideas and said they would support the project.

(L-r) Dr Khaled Elsherbiny from the Arab Academy for Science Technology & Maritime Transport, and Dr Momchil Terziev and Dr Tahsin Tezdogan from the Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean & Marine Engineering at the University of Strathclyde.

What feedback have you received so far from boating communities?

MT: I spoke to Scottish Waterways for All and there were a few boating members there, and I’ve since received emails from other boat-owners. The community is very conscious about being as low-carbon as possible. The problem is, and we see this with our partner organisations as well, that they want to create a carbon-neutral boat now as the technology exists but it’s either too expensive or too difficult to implement. We’ve had zero opposition to our ideas, and so far received nothing but support and enthusiasm, which has been a great thing to witness. TT: The other feedback we’ve received has been around dredging – it’s important but very expensive. Boaters also like the idea of the app and want to test it on their vessels.

How are you involving boaters in the project?

TT: Towards the end of the project we’re hoping to organise engagement days as it’s really important to have support from the general public. We will conduct some awareness campaigns by creating a website and producing informative videos to reach non-technical audiences to explain what we are doing and how they can contribute to cutting emissions. We discussed with some of our partners about doing outreach activities, such as visits to schools and local canals, to raise awareness of climate change and showcase related STEM career options.

What do you personally hope to get out of this project?

TT: Ultimately our aim is to increase awareness in this area for researchers, Government and the public. So far research on sustainable transport and zero-carbon emissions for boats has focussed on ocean-going vessels. I don’t want to say the inland waterways have been overlooked but it’s an area that hasn’t received enough attention. At the end of the project we will produce recommendations for the Government on how canal and river transport can contribute to it’s greenhouse gas emission targets. If they can take some of these onboard it would be the ideal outcome for us.