With the Isle of Wight council last night explaining the work to identify the root cause of the issues with the hydraulic system on the Cowes Floating Bridge were taking longer than expected, the local councillor is calling for the council to scrap FB6 and agree to order FB 7 – based on the designs of FB5.
The Independent Isle of Wight councillor for East Cowes, Karl Love, told News OnTheWight,
“My constituents and our Island people are totally fed up with the empty promises made by this administration in resolving the issues connected with this Floating Bridge.
“We are informed that we have to wait longer yet again until the engineers report has been received. It’s starting to look like the predictions of some, of a significant length of service suspension, is correct.
“We have school children returning in the next weeks and no sign of a solution. Some people find it very difficult to travel on board the replacement launches which cannot be accessed by many people with reduced mobility.”
Love: “We must draw this matter to a close”
Cllr Love added,
“Two years ago I suggested that we purchased our own IWC motor launch which would be fully accessible to act as a replacement in times of Floating Bridge failure or when it was taken out of service.
“We could train existing staff to use it. This fell on deaf ears and today the costs to tax payers keep mounting.
“For all our sakes, including IWC we must draw this matter to a close.”
Love: “Order a replacement bridge based on FB5”
The Independent councillor went on to say,
“I can see no other option but to order a replacement bridge based on the designs of Floating Bridge 5, a proven vessel which worked well, had two engines and virtually never broke down.
“We could of course make any replacement Floating Bridge 7 look Visually attractive for it to be Photogenic and be a tourist attraction whist maintaining its design specification of floating bridge 5 but modernised and using green technology.
“We need to be constructive and progressive and this is what what together we can achieve. To this end we need to formulate solutions and together with others we are working on this.”
