Are Scotland’s ferries too cheap?

Judged against other countries with inhabited islands, Scotland’s ferry service is among the best in the world, something its critics rarely acknowledge. The fleet is younger, the service more frequent, and customer satisfaction is high at 88%.

In one important measure, though, Scotland’s ferries are different: they are exceptionally cheap. Is that a good thing? Should we be subsidising tourists to take massive lumps of metal across the sea just to park them outside their holiday homes for a week? Is that compatible with our climate goals? Does it swallow capacity that locals may need?

And how does this affect the way we interact with the islands? Does taking the car change the way you experience the place you visit? Is it effectively a carapace? Does the presence of other visitors’ motor vehicles change some of the things that you hoped to find on your trip?

Low prices, long queues

At many ferry ports, tourists appear surprised at how little they are paying – sometimes by a wide margin. Their main complaint, particularly in the summer, is not the price but the availability – sailings are often full.

Recently, I waited at Mallaig to travel to Skye and was on standby for three crossings before giving up. I chatted with international tourists in the same queue. (We had the option of driving round to the bridge, but that’s not available to most standby ferry hopefuls.)

Rob, just back from a kayaking trip in the Western Isles, took the ferry from Stornoway. I picked him up at Ullapool. The ferry was excellent, and staff were very helpful. The Leodasachs’ main complaint about the ferries, Rob found, was that they often can’t get a space. This can be stressful – especially if they need to travel at short notice for emergencies like hospital visits. That is another wee blow to the communities of these places.

A quick check on the Oban to Mull route shows that many weekend crossings are full over the next three weeks.

This shouldn’t be surprising. If you subsidise a finite resource to make it unusually cheap, then demand is going to exceed supply.

When the price signal was red

Years ago, ferry travel in Scotland was more expensive. When we took our children on holidays, we often left the car on the mainland and travelled with rucksacks.

We regularly visited the Isle of Lismore, where we have friends. In those days, it would have cost easily over £100 – in relative terms – to take a vehicle on the one-hour car ferry from Oban. That price signal encouraged us, like many holidaymakers, to leave the car behind and we generally took the wee foot ferry over from Port Appin.

Fewer cars were one of the things we loved about island life. The children could roam freely and had a running account at the local shop. If they walked a couple of miles to get there, they could buy a sweetie.

A local crofter supplemented her income as a minicab driver. You had to book in advance, but she’d be waiting at the pier to take us to whatever cottage we had booked, offering updates on island life and the tribulations of farming along the way.

In relative terms again, the taxi fare would probably be about £20. It was clear that it provided significant savings compared to shipping your car. Now the ferry costs the same as a return taxi fare – just over £20 each way. But that’s not equivalent in terms of energy or emissions – one is the journey of a family and a few bags of jumpers and jeans a couple of miles, and the other involves moving a tonne of metal across the sea.

Surely that is too cheap? It’s no wonder the Oban-Lismore ferry is often also booked out, despite the much larger vessel now in use on that crossing.

If you bring the car, you bring the big shop

Today, the low prices encourage holidaymakers to bring cars primarily as storage. This means they can save more money by doing a big supermarket shop on the mainland, leaving little room in the meal plan for what’s available locally. That’s a missed opportunity: many islands do offer delicious, locally-sourced food – if you leave space for discovery and make a bit of effort.

I recall once finding my way to a fish processing plant on Barra and approaching a man in wellies and a mask. He sold me a big bag of langoustines – the kind you can imagine being airlifted to Paris – for a fiver and we barbecued them on the beach.

We also sometimes used to send the kids out to forage when low on supplies and I can still recall the mussels or clams in broth they served up – maybe slightly gritty if they hadn’t got all the barnacles off – nettle soup, seaweed scones, wild blaeberry tart and so on. All very memorable – sometimes a good way, sometimes not. But “memorable” is not a word you would ever use to describe a pre-packed lasagne.

Beauty spots become lay-bys

One holiday, we booked a two-day windsurfing course for the kids on Tiree. We were camping with a lot of gear. We found a shopping trolley at the ferry port and wheeled it to a wild camping site.

I was exhausted – the kind of fatigue young children bring – and suffered a migraine the next day. Rob took the kids by cab to Loch Bhasapol, hung around taking photos, and fed them somewhere before returning by taxi in the evening.

I still remember the day I spent watching the sun rise, shine and set, moving over the sea from the tent, hearing the sound of bird song, smelling the fresh sea air, enjoying the peace and quiet. A total reset. There was no traffic.

Of course, you – or I – might be glad to take advantage of cheap and convenient car ferries – but then so is everyone else. All too soon, the beauty spot you longed to visit starts to look more like a congested layby with a view.

A policy with consequences

The Road Equivalent Tariff, or RET, was introduced in 2008 to make ferry fares equivalent to the cost of a similar road journey. Initially applied to the Western Isles, Coll and Tiree, it was expanded in 2015 to high-volume routes such as Largs-Cumbrae, Wemyss Bay-Rothesay, Oban-Craignure, and Mallaig-Armadale. RET significantly increased car traffic on these routes. In 2018, the latest data I can find, it cost the Scottish Government over £25 million in subsidies – probably much more today.

RET was intended to increase tourism, and it has, but not without consequences: more motorhomes on single-track roads, more wear and tear, more emissions. (Domestic transport is responsible for a third of Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions.) Arguably, it also discourages other forms of tourism like cycle tourism. Hiring four bikes for a week certainly costs more than taking a car and it is not fun for cyclists, sharing the roads with impatient motorists.

Subsidising tourists to bring cars and motorhomes to Scotland’s islands is not an effective use of public funds. That money could be redirected — perhaps to subsidise bike hire or support car clubs based at island ports.

According to the Scottish Government’s National Transport Strategy, there may be a change in the pipeline, although the wording is ambiguous. It reads:

“We will retain Road Equivalent Tariff (RET) as the basis for all passenger and islander vehicle fares and consider changes to RET, including how the RET formula will be applied on longer routes, such as Shetland, removing RET for non-islanders, and publish a review of the RET car formula.”

Removing RET for non-islanders is a good idea. Some people will complain – no doubt vociferously – and claim it will damage tourism. It won’t. Over-tourism is a global phenomenon that has proved resistant to minor price hikes. And also, taking your car over on the ferry is by no means key to a great holiday. You will probably have a better time without it.

Rethinking the pricing of Scotland’s ferries could help encourage a kind of tourism that is lighter on the land, less damaging to the climate and environment, and more enriching for both visitors and communities.

First published on. the author’s A Letter from Scotland Substack