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| Stuart Ballantyne, Chair of Sea Transport Corporation |
HOW TO END THE MADNESS:
WHY SCOTLAND’S FERRY SYSTEM IS FAILING AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TO FIX IT
by Professor Alf Baird (12 Nov 2021)
It might come as a shock to learn that one of the world’s most successful ferry designers happens to be a Scotsman, yet his repeated offers to build and invest in ferries in Scotland have been rejected by the Scottish Government and its hapless ferry agencies CMAL and CalMac. Dr. Stuart Ballantyne, chairman of Australian-based Sea Transport Corp, is also the inventor of the now standard global ferry type known as the ‘medium-speed ropax catamaran’; ‘ropax’ is the industry term for a drive on/off vehicle and passenger ferry.
I had the immense privilege of working with Stuart and his team on numerous ferry projects and studies over the past thirty years. As a maritime economist, my job was to study the feasibility of ferries and other ship types on different shipping routes worldwide, for public and private sector clients and research funding agencies including the European Commission and Nippon Foundation. Being an academic I also developed and published theoretical frameworks to assist with ferry design and operational analyses and assessments.
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