Students studying the Master portion of their civil engineering degree at Southampton University have, this week, started a six month consultancy protect into the potential future for the East and West Cowes crossing, currently serviced by the Cowes Floating Bridge.
It’s all been organised by local East Cowes residents and it won’t cost the Island a penny.
VentnorBlog went (all the way!) to East Cowes last week to chat them about their project (Podcast coming out on VB this weekend). They’re enthused by the project, telling VB, “We’ll look into every avenue we can and try and come up with something reasonable and practical for the future.”
Six month project
The five-man team will be working on this for six months, with it taking up almost half of their work for this academic year. Being engineers, they’ll be looking for realistic, workable solutions.
They also got no axe to grind, as they pointed out – “The fact is, we’ve got no vested interest in any particular party. We’ve literally come over here. We’re going to look at the facts, look at what we can do, then look at the feasible future for Cowes and the Isle of Wight. We’ve got no political interest in any side of the river, or any part of the Isle of Wight.”
A notional value of £32,500/engineer = £150k+
If this kind of study were being paid for, it’d cost a fortune. As of next year, this team of Masters students should be charged out at around £500/day, bring the notional value of the project to £32,500 per engineer, equal to over £150,000 for the whole project.
Having this valuable, but free to the Island, analysis is all down to active, concerned residents of East Cowes who have taken it upon themselves to get them University involved.
These residents told VB they felt forced into action after the Isle of Wight council started speaking about charging foot passengers to use the currently-free service, or privatising the vital crossing. They just wanted to have all of the alternatives explore thoroughly.
Cllr Giles rejected free help
When the idea of the study was first floated, the reaction of Cllr Edward Giles, who is both a member of the Conservative Cabinet and the elected representative of the neighbouring Whippingham and Osborne ward, was somewhat surprising.
Back in February this year he rejected the consultancy out-of-hand, while appearing to attempt to deride the project before it even started. The CP reported Cllr Edward Giles said “He appreciated the offer but rejected it on the grounds it was a student project and not a professional consultancy scheme.”
Local people work on the solution
Julia Hill, who had previously questioned if the council were in a position to reject the free consultation, was one of those involved with arranging the students to come over. She told VB, “It’s great to have free unbiased scrutiny of the value of the floating bridge to residents and business of East Cowes/West Cowes.”
VB‘ll be keeping in touch with the team and bringing update to you as and when they occur.
Podcast this weekend
Come back to VentnorBlog over the weekend when we’ll publish the podcast of an interview we did with the Masters students about the project.
BTW, if you want to hear the Floating Bridge, here’s a little sample of it …
Sounds of Cowes floating bridge chain by onthewight
Update 18:36: Corrected value of work to £150k+ for all engineers
