Scotland has over 790 islands – some 94 inhabited – so getting around them via ferr is rightly treated as a “lifeline” service by our Government. Whilst the contract to run them is delivered by private company, the Government overseas this – ensuring reliable performance and afforrdable pricing.

In England ferriers are not considered an essential service. Whilst they’re still privately run, they’re not considered a public service either. Westminster just lets private companies get on with it as they see fit. Its no surprise then, to discover that England’s ferries are amonst the most expensive in Europe – whilst Scotland’s are amongst the cheapest [1]:

In fact if you compare Scotland’s ferries to other forms of public transport, they still come out by far the cheapest way to get about [2]. Using the Scottish and English ferry routes shown above, this is how they compare. Those English ferries are starting to look really expensive!

Reliability

The England-based political parties and their UK media, ever hunting for a spurious headline to attack our Government with, often choose ferry reliability. But the facts don’t support their complaints. Of course anything mechanical breaks down sometimes, and the weather in Scotland is quite bad from time to time, but how reliable are Scotland’s ferries overall?

Another way to look at this is how punctual the timetabled services are. Let’s compare Scotland’s ferries with other forms of public transport [3]:

As you can see, Scotland’s timetabled ferries are far more punctual than UK trains and planes, or English buses (data for Scottish buses wasn’t available).

Sources

[1] https://www.vivanoda.co.uk/study-ferry/ferry-prices-europe-en-gb.html#europe_lines_most_expensive

[2] Planes: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/adhocs/14525quarterlyandannualaveragepricesforairtravelanditssubcomponents and https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/domestic-flights-in-the-uk-where-do-we-fly/

Trains: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/

Buses: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus-statistics-data-tables#costs-fares-and-revenue-bus04

[3] UK trains: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/jwfpdpty/performance-stats-release-jan-mar-2024.pdf

UK planes: https://www.caa.co.uk/data-and-analysis/uk-aviation-market/flight-punctuality/uk-flight-punctuality-statistics/2024/

English buses: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proportion-of-bus-services-running-on-time