What Would a Hypothetical Gozo Fast Ferry Service Look Like?
Back in March of 2017, then-Minister for Gozo Anton Refalo had insisted on the government’s commitment to launch a fast ferry service by 2018. Two months later, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that at least 12 companies were interested in operating the service.
This commitment seems on track to be honoured in this government’s second mandate, according to a recent pledge by Gozo Minister Caruana. More recent reports seem to indicate that the government is asking any potential operator to also operate the traditional ferry crossing, in what’s likely to be percieved as an effort to maintain the service under the umbrella of the Gozo Channel brand. While the technicalities of what shape and form a fast ferry service remain sketchy, here are a few hypotheticals.
The Route
Traditional ships are relatively slow, with the Gozo Channel ferry peaking at a speed of 12 knots or 22 kilometres per hour – which meant that it often made sense to travel the shortest route across, docking in Cirkewwa. But with the highest concentration of Malta’s businesses located around the harbour region, this also meant that the end of the ferry trip was the beginning of a very long drive.
Fast ferries can manage double or even triple that speed, and with the plan so far being to carry only passengers, not cars, Valletta became the obvious choice, with the government specifying Xatt il-Barriera road, an area overlooked by the Upper Barrakka Gardens.
A hypothetical Valletta-Mgarr route.
The route to Mgarr will probably see the ferry sailing off Malta’s north coast, before turning west into Mgarr. At a distance of around 28 kilometers, a vessel capable of reaching 40 knots, or 74 kilometers per hour, would be able to complete the voyage in around 24 minutes – roughly the same time it takes the current ferry to get from Cirkewwa to Mgarr. Navigating slowly into Valletta at harbor speed, and docking might push that up to slightly over half an hour.
It’s likely that this service will be more prone to disruption by the weather than Gozo Channel’s, since the route is exposed to Malta’s most common wind, the North Westerly.
The Ships
High-speed craft traditionally came in the form of either hydrofoils or hovercraft. In recent decades these have been mostly replaced by catamarans. And while a number of more traditional monohulls are also serving as high-speed craft owing to advances in shipbuilding, catamarans still constitute the sizeable majority of high speed-craft.
Kat Express 1, linking Aarhus to Odden in the North Sea is the world’s largest diesel powered catamaran.
The twin hull design of a catamaran allows it to reduce the resistance of the water as it sails through it, compared to other more traditional monohull designs. Modern catamarans predominantly use pump-jets powered by diesel engines to reach speeds somewhere between a 40 to 50 knot range.
One local example of a fast-ferry catamaran service is the Valletta-Pozzallo service operated by Virtu Ferries, with the fleet’s flagship craft, the 100m Jean De La Valette routinely hauls 230 cars and 800 passengers across the channel.
Examples of this type of service are numerous. Mainland Greece is linked to various islands in the Aegean sea through a fleet of at least 9 vessels operated by the competitor companies SeaJet and Hellenic Seaways. The Spanish company Baleària links the Balearic islands to the Spanish mainland, while in the Baltic sea the largest passenger catamarans in currently operation, carrying 1200 passengers and 417 cars, connect Jutland to Zealand at a leisurely 40 knots.
And while these services might seem like oversized solutions, at least for now, other smaller examples exist. In Southampton Red Funnel’s Red Jet line of passenger only ferries seat around 200 people, and connect the Isle of Wight with the UK once or twice every hour.
Similarly, half a world away, on the Atlantic coast of the United States, numerous operators, like SeaStreak and MBTA Harbor Express use small 149 passenger ferries to link port cities across New England.
It’s probable that what the government is envisioning for Gozo is more along these lines.
Schedule
By specifying a passenger only service, the government seems to want to only shift passengers and the fraction of drivers who drive to the Valletta area for work from the current ferry to the new one. An immediate problem with would be the sheer amount of service required early in the morning and in the late afternoon, as people get to and back from work, and the relative lull in between.
Ships sitting at dock make no money, so an operator would probably have to think up of new ways to fill ships during the day, such as shuffling tourists and sight seeing tours. Potential bidders might also be apprehensive of guarantees requested by the government: officials might want to influence or control things like timetables and route frequency, in a manner similar to what happened with the bus service. Since such intrusion for private companies almost always means less profit, a delicate tango between an acceptable level of service, profitability and subsidies would likely have to ensue.
Whether the frequency of people wanting to use a fast ferry service is sufficient to sustain it is another question. Few remember, but for a time Gozo Channel did operate the catamaran Victoria Express, using it to link Sliema to Gozo. The service lasted 6 years, spanning between 1996 and 2002.
But whatever shape a fast ferry service takes, it probably can’t come fast enough. The Gozo Channel Line has been consistently registering an increase in cars and passengers in every quarter the last couple of years – so much so that the company is now looking into adding a fourth ferry.