The troubled Cowes Floating Bridge will return to service for the first time in 14 weeks next week – but for how long this time?
Council officials have confirmed that Floating Bridge No. 6 will resume a normal service between East Cowes and Cowes from 05:00 on Tuesday 20th October.
It will be the first time the vessel has be in operation since 14th July.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Isle of Wight Council has said:
“The Isle of Wight Council can confirm the floating bridge will return to service early next week following repairs to its hydraulic systems.
“Staff are due to undertake essential safety training on Monday (19 October) with the vessel entering service at 5am on Tuesday”.
Where’s the usual comment from guestbert?
He loves slagging off certain forms of transport
Place your bets .
I say 2 weeks .
I give it two days….
Read what the report says “……. will resume normal service………”. 2 weeks? Bit generous aren’t you
Sorry, not weeks but days. Or even hours
3days
Don’t do that you will loose , by the hour not day!
I’ll give it a day before one of the hydraulic systems or something fails “AGAIN”.
Will fail first crossing.
Looking forward to having you back
Where can I buy a cheap stopwatch? It doesn’t need to run for long.
Perhaps the council will be able to apply for even more funding for repairs the next time this disastrous piece of engineering stops working. Of course they won’t actually have to spend any such funding on it (at least not for another extendable period of time). It would come in handy for council staff bonuses though. It’s a great can cow.
Damn typo, cash cow
” Normal Service ” normal service is out of action, people just want a ‘ Service ‘.
Perhaps it should be free to all vehicles to reduce the ongoing chaos at St Mary’s roadworks.
What’s a floating bridge?
– It’s a phantom thing..
Floating Bridge:- a large expensive floating steel barge that pulls on chains, at best operates at 20% of the time and requires constant expensive repairs.
This is the modern definition.
Lets hope the right people go down with the ship
Getting boring now what a joke
Can’t understand why it took so long all the other ferry’s get it fixed in a couple of days and there 10 time bigger
and, “Staff are due to undertake essential safety training”
I wonder what that is?
Swimming?
Manning the bilge pumps?
Walking the plank?
Don’t tell me they will have to do the safety talk to all the passengers, showing them where the life jackets are and the emergency exits?
Which Tuesday & for how long?
This is tremendous news. I’m so excited I’m really tempted to get up early and be first in the queue for the 5am voyage. Perhaps l should queue from midnight just to be sure I am first…… OK, I know, I lead a sad life.
Does anyone care? This idiotic project is a disaster and a waste of money, shut it down…
Surely we don’t need it any more now that the council have made all those improvements to the St Mary’s junction
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…… I like your sense of humour.. ah, thats funny.
Next time it breaks down let’s all march on County Hall and give the people responsible the worst Chinese burns they’ve ever had.
Wow as a engineer technician with a shipping company who sent me to ships and to do essential works whilst ship was at sea not to hold up ships routine in port. Whilst in bad weather and good i have overhauled many huge hydraulic cylinders,pumps,motors,pipes and valves and without any assistance with lifting equipment which i had to fabricate myself even welding lifting supports on bottom of container cargo. In a 21 day voyage 6 cargo hatch cyl overhauled and complete system. If i took floating bridge time to complete i would of been sacked by now.
If councillors were employed by privately run businesses, they would have quite rightly been sacked as a result of this fiasco. I cannot understand why this useless waste of money they call floating bridge number 6 was bought in the first place. It’s predecessor worked well. The current one seems to spend more time out of service than in. The fact there are permanent road signs warning of ‘floating bridge out of action’ is, in my view, admittance that the thing isn’t fit for purpose. A permanent bridge across the Medina should have been the replacement for floating bridge 5, then they needn’t have wasted huge sums of money on yet another stupid, ill thought out ‘scheme’ otherwise known as St Mary’s junction. There will be traffic congestion there for ever more now the roundabout has gone. And finally, talk of ‘improvements’ on Coppins Bridge, a fly over maybe? Or removal of the traffic lights, the vast amounts of them? I don’t think so, not likely to ever see any ‘improvements’ there. I do believe the council’s definition of improvements is some what different to the rest of us. Annoyingly, we the tax payer are paying their salaries!
The bigger issue is this boat has a finite life, anything from nil to 25 years at present. So it would be prudent to plan for its replacement now. And, instead of wasting everyone’s time and money on ANOTHER boat, that replacement should be a bridge across the medina.
With all the ‘doom and gloom’ around it is nice that the council have provided some ‘comic relief’ in the form of ‘Floating Bridge No6’. Keep the humour Councillor’s it helps take islanders minds of Covid and other issues for a little while. I imagine The Councillors are like ‘Dad’s Army’ where Mannering is in charge with a mad idea on how to fix the thing, Wilson saying about the idea, “do you think that’s wise?” and the hapless Jones trying to fix the thing but failing and with the rest of the platoon sliding around on hydraulic fluid and falling on their behinds with Jones’ shouting ‘Don’t Panic, Don’t Panic!.
A few days ago I saw on the local TV news the arrival of a new cross Channel ferry, built in China, which was being checked to see that it fitted into its dock. It did! Just goes to show doesn’t it.
Should we have a Chinese junk?
I see that the original council leader Jono Bacon who initiated the floating bridge farce wants to start a new party on the island.
Joke,needs to be boycotted