Thursday, 08 January 2009 23:00

Dryport Project - funding approved by INTERREG 4b programme

The €4.8 million European project known as "Dryport" is to examine the critical role that dryports can play in maximising the capacity and efficiency of sea ports, while also shifting traffic off the roads and on to rail or inland waterway. The Transport Research Institute, along with SESTRANS, will be the Scottish partners in an multi-national European consortium.

Dryport will be looking at the development, design and effective operation of dryports that are fully integrated with the freight handling systems of the sea port facilities they support.  The project will also look at monitoring carbon dioxide effects and the integration of dryports into the EU’s Motorways of the Sea concept. The most important aspect of Dryport will be promoting the shift of goods from road to rail and water.

For further information, please see the TRI Projects page or visit the Dryport Website.

Thursday, 08 January 2009 22:00

Interferry Award for Students

Interferry, the world ferry organisation, has modified its 2009 Student Paper Competition to make it more appealing to students. The competition now includes expenses to attend the Istanbul Conference, as well as various prizes. Winning papers are to be presented at this years event in Istanbul between 14-16 October.
 
The event is sponsored by Germanischer Lloyd (GL) with a selection panel consisting of Len Rouche, CEO of Interferry, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it of Edinburgh Napier University TRI, and a representative of GL.
 
The cost of transportation to the conference, the conference registration fee, as well as meals and accommodation during the conference will be provided for the winning students.  Students living close to the conference and not requiring transportation and accommodation may choose instead to receive 750 euros in cash.
 
The sponsor, Germanischer Lloyd, will award a cash prize to each winning student.  Selected students may also be invited to present their paper at the sponsor's facilities. Full details of the competition and applications procedure are included in the attached Student Program.

For further details about the program, please download the information sheet (Word document).

Thursday, 08 January 2009 00:00

Prof Alf Baird welcomes new ferry to Orkney

The new catamaran ferry “Pentalina” which has been built for private operator Pentland Ferries to serve the Gill’s Bay to St Margaret’s Hope route across the Pentland Firth to Orkney has now arrived in Scotland. 

The ferry, manufactured in Cebu in the Philippines by FBMA Inc., is a 70m long vessel constructed with a steel hull and aluminium superstructure. Pentalina is designed to carry up to 350 passengers, plus 9 trucks and 32 cars (or over 80 cars). The vessel, with a maximum speed of 19 knots, will be introduced in January 2009 across the Pentland Firth, one of the most notoriously difficult stretches of water in the world. 

All eyes will be on the 100% privately funded, unsubsidised new ferry, which will compete with the Caledonian MacBrayne-owned Northlink Ferries. The latter receives public funding of around £30 million a year to run services to Shetland and Orkney using traditional monohull ro-ro ferries. 

The catamaran has a significantly lower cost structure than the CalMac/Northlink ship. Newbuild cost of the 350-passenger/88 car Pentalina (estimated at about £10m) was one third the cost of Northlink’s 600-passenger/110 car Hamnavoe (£28m in 2002!). Pentalina has a smaller crew so there are also cost savings there. Perhaps most importantly, however, the Pentalina’s design efficiency and lower engine power gives a fuel consumption of about 600 litres/hour compared with the Hamnavoe’s 1,800 litres/hour, at 16/17 knots. 

By virtue of the shorter route between Gill’s Bay and St. Margaret’s Hope, Pentland Ferries Pentalina should be capable of providing up to four roundtrips/day, compared with Northlink’s three roundtrips/day on the Stromness-Scrabster route. Even taking into account the Pentalina’s lower capacity relative to Hamnavoe, the catamaran is expected to eventually carry more traffic than its fuel-hungry subsidized competitor. 

The article the Ileach published on this topic a while back seemed to have little effect and the Minister subsequently sanctioned the order for a traditional design of ferry for Islay at a cost of some £24.5m. The argument still stands, however, that a superior and also far less expensive option could have been to instead order two medium-speed (18 knot) catamarans for the same price as one traditional monohull vessel. That option was never really tested at the time. Overall vessel capital, crew, and fuel costs (which make up 90% of the total running cost of the ship) could have been significantly reduced. 

Whilst new to Scotland, it is not as if the medium-speed vehicle catamaran is radically new or un-tested. The Pentalina’s Queensland based designer and naval architect Stuart Ballantyne has designed many similar vessels for operation in over 40 countries. Mr. Ballantyne also owns a ferry company in Australia which has operated similar vessels successfully for many years. 

The new vessel owning company, Caledonian Maritime Asssets (CMAL), is now quite rightly taking a significant interest in the future possibilities for this and other types of vessel. That should be reassuring for Scotland’s island communities who depend on the most optimal solutions possible, to help contain and where possible reduce transport costs, as well as enabling operators to increase revenues through service enhancements. 

The Pentalina medium-speed catamaran ferry experience will inevitably be monitored closely. However the anticipated success of such a craft on the Pentland Firth augers well for many other routes in Scotland, and elsewhere.  

Thursday, 18 December 2008 14:02

David Quarmby Honorary Doctorate

On Thursday 13th November at Edinburgh Napier University's historic Craighouse campus, the Chairman of TRI's Board, Dr David Quarmby, was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Engineering.

Laureation speech by Professor Kevin Cullinane, Director of TRI 

Vice-Chancellor, it is my privilege to present Dr. David Quarmby for the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Engineering.

David Quarmby is a seasoned, renowned and widely-respected transport professional who has accumulated a wealth of experience encompassing business, government, public bodies and academia. Having received a major scholarship, in 1962 he graduated from King’s College Cambridge with a first class degree in Engineering and Economics. He then moved to Leeds University to pursue a Diploma in Industrial Management and then to enroll on a PhD while working as an Assistant Lecturer and then Lecturer in Operational Research and Transport Economics. In 1967, he graduated with a doctorate on the basis of his research into factors affecting the choice of alternative modes of transport for travelling to work. This work was subsequently widely disseminated and cited. For many in the transport community, it represents a seminal contribution to the field.

By the time he had achieved his PhD, the originality and quality of David’s work had already been recognised in the highest circles – with his appointment, in the preceding year, as an Economic Advisor to the Ministry of Transport. In 1970, David joined London Transport where he held a number of appointments; first as Director of Operational Research, then as Chief Commercial and Planning Officer. By 1975, he was a Board Member, first with responsibility for fares, marketing and planning, and then from 1978 as Managing Director of London Buses.

In 1984, David left London Transport to become a main Board Director of Sainsbury's; a role he would retain for the ensuing 12 years. Although he joined as Distribution Director, for his last eight years at Sainsbury’s he was Joint Managing Director - responsible for all non-trading functions in the supermarket business, and latterly for strategy and business development for the wider Sainsbury Group. It should be remembered that during this period in the history of supermarket competition and rankings, there were many more competitors than there are now and the development of out-of-town hyper-stores was still very much in its formative stages. Those in the know attribute a large part of Sainsbury’s success at the time to the leadership of David in establishing what was acknowledged as international best practice in retail logistics.

Since 1996, just a small sample of David’s career highlights include the following: Vice President of the Chartered Institute of Transport, President of the Institute of Logistics, Chairman of the British Tourist Authority, Chairman of the English Tourist Board, Ministerial Advisor – leading to the formation of Transport for London, Chairman of the Docklands Light Railway, Deputy Chairman and sometime Chairman of the “Millennium Dome” company, Board Member of Transport for London and Chairman of the  Strategic Rail Authority.

He currently holds numerous appointments: Chairman of the Independent Transport Commission, a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum, a member of the Public Policy Committee of the RAC Foundation and is active in the Chartered Institute of Transport.  He is a director of NedRailways, the UK subsidiary of the Dutch Railways which runs two rail companies in England. As a Director of the Colin Buchanan Consultancy, he also engages directly in the hands-on management of projects as interesting and diverse as: Developing the Greater Manchester Bus Strategy; planning the tourism transport strategy for Hangzhou (China’s largest tourist destination) and even advising the old adversary Tesco on transport and traffic issues related to their store development strategy.

I must emphasize again that this is by no means a comprehensive list of his achievements – royal recognition of which was given in 2003 with the award of a CBE.

David has always had strong personal interests in transport issues – especially in road pricing, transport policy and, more recently, in climate change.  He leads the CILT’s response to the government’s initiative entitled ‘Towards a Sustainable Transport System’ and this summer presented a provocative critique of this initiative. As chair of the CILT’s Policy Studies Committee, he has sponsored and guided the production of a major report on Sustainable Business Transport, to be published in early 2009.  He was also a member of the Royal Society of Arts Advisory Board on their CarbonLimited programme and led the Society’s work exploring the feasibility of personal carbon trading as applied to transport. 

Coming closer to home, David has been associated with Edinburgh Napier University’s Transport Research Institute since 1997 when it was formed, first as a member of the Advisory Board, and since 2006 as Chair of the Transport Research Institute.  In this capacity I have come to know, like and respect David as a considered and sagacious adviser on strategic issues. It gives me great personal pleasure, therefore, to make the following commendation.

Vice-Chancellor, in recognition of his major contribution to the transport and logistics industries, I invite you to confer on Dr. David Quarmby the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Engineering.

David Quarmby’s remarks at the award of Honorary Doctor of Engineering

Chancellor, Principal and Vice Chancellor, distinguished guests, our graduands, ladies and gentlemen – it is a great honour and privilege to have conferred on me an honorary degree of this university, and I thank you most sincerely for it.   I believe the award of this degree reflects the importance that the university places on transport as an area of study and research;  after all, the Transport Research Institute here at Napier, whose Board I chair, was formed 11 years ago as the first of the university’s multidisciplinary research centres.  From the beginning it has drawn its members and associates from schools and faculties right across the university – engineers, economists, psychologists, social scientists, geographers, mathematicians.  And over 20 academics from 9 other Scottish universities affiliate to TRi, making it the largest centre for transport research in Scotland.  

It has provided a focus for researching many different transport questions, from understanding the psychology of high speed unsafe car driving to developing the maritime role of North Sea Ports, and advising Orkney Island Harbours;  estimating the demand for a hovercraft ferry on the Forth to how best to organise taxi sharing to get people to work in remote areas of Scotland.   This and much else at TRi has helped to establish Napier University as the leading centre for transport research and study in Scotland, and one of the five leading centres in the UK.

TRi was chosen by the Scottish government to be the Scottish hub for the UK Transport Research centre now being funded by government and the research councils.  And next February TRi is organising a major seminar on behalf of the Scottish government on transport and climate change.

This diversity reflects the way transport touches our lives, every one of us, every day.  The roads we drive on to get to the supermarket or cinema, the cycle lane we use to get to school or university, the buses we go to work on, the train or ferry we use to visit our relatives, the airport and airline we use to go abroad for holiday – all these require decisions to be made about what to build, what to provide, at what cost, what fares to charge;  they require someone to research and understand the needs of travellers, and translate these into bus services that meet our needs, train services which go where we want with enough capacity.  The needs of people with disabilities to get about must be understood.   And the books we order on Amazon today get delivered to us tomorrow because someone is planning their distribution.

The universities have the task of educating young people with the skills and intellectual capability to grasp, address and resolve these sorts of issues that society faces today.  Addressing this myriad of transport problems needs capable and enthusiastic graduates from a wide range of disciplines, and many Napier TRi graduates and MSc’s are to be found in government, in the consultancies and in transport businesses here in Scotland and south of the border.    I hope there are some of you who will find you way into this fascinating field. 

But it is also in research and consultancy work that universities like Napier need to – and do - add value to the communities they serve.  Today we talk also of knowledge transfer - a phrase which goes to the heart of what today’s universities, and Napier in particular, are about.  Unlike consultancy firms who solve a problem or give advice to a client and then move on, the university is also in the business of helping the client organisations to learn how to tackle it themselves, as well as simply sorting the problem for them.  

Thank you again for the conferment of my honorary degree.  It is my privilege to be associated with Napier University as the external, independent chair of this vibrant research centre  - one which helps ensure that Napier University is educating young (and some not so young) people in transport topics;  one which (as the leading centre in Scotland) is making a real contribution to the transport problems facing our community and our world; and one which through knowledge transfer helps enrich the ability of our community, our government, our businesses and their leaders to address these issues for themselves.

Tuesday, 16 December 2008 23:11

Congratulations to Neale Kinnear

Tuesday, 16 December 2008 16:27

First medium speed catamaran arrived in UK

On the 9th of December the mv Pentalina, operated by Pentland Ferries arrived in Orkney after her 10,000 mile journey from the FBMA shipyard in Cebu. The new ferry, designed by Stuart Ballantyne of Sea Transport Solutions in Brisbane, will shortly enter service on the Gill's Bay-St. Margaret's Hope route. The ship is the first medium-speed passenger/vehicle catamaran of its type in the UK, although Sea Transport has already designed similar vessels for some 43 countries. The mv Pentalina will carry 350 passengers and 88 cars (or over 30 cars plus 8 heavy goods vehicles/coaches) at a speed of 18 knots. The ship will reduce the journey time between mainland Scotland and Orkney to about 45 minutes. Up to four roundtrips daily are scheduled for the peak summer period, with three round trips/day at other times. Pentland Ferries (www.pentlandferries.co.uk) operate a non-subsidised service.

Edinburgh Napier University Transport Research Institute are working with industry and public bodies to see if there is further potential for the medium-speed catamaran vessel type to be employed on other routes in Scotland and elsewhere. The superior design of the medium-speed catamaran means it is capable of reducing emissions by over 50% compared to similar capacity conventional ferries. And as the vessel is medium-speed rather than high-speed, its proven seakeeping and reliability in heavy weather conditions is as good if not better than conventional ferry alternatives.

Alf Baird captured pictures from the ship's first days in Orkney: