This update in from campaigners for the floating bridge. Ed
WHEN & WHERE: 5.30 pm, Monday, 3 July, East Cowes side next to the floating bridge
WHY & UPDATE: The Council is supposed to reintroduce vehicle and pedestrian charges starting today, yet the bridge is running very poorly if at all.
The floating bridge was not working a large part of Friday due to electrical problems AND was not working (electrical fault with prow) Saturday morning when crews of 1,300 boats needed to move quickly between Cowes and East Cowes for the Round the Island Race (HUGE queues for the little replacement boat, and allegedly sailors were not informed that it would take longer to cross the Medina – local sailors contacted us telling us that people had not been told.)
The floating bridge still is not running two hours at low tide twice a day. Cars are still scraping coming off the prow/ramp, and the bridge is very slow, making few crossings per hour. It has a horrible ‘unreliability reputation’ right now.
No sign yet of how it might be fixed properly, how much it would cost, or even if it CAN be fixed to be as good if not better than the old one (as the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership’s Solent Gateways business plan said it would have more crossings per day, etc.
