Dave Bowell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Were I to own a property with an end of garden mooring, where the only access >to said mooring is via my property, that mooring only exists for my own use. >It is not > available to anyone else who may want to use it. I am not consuming a product > where there is a limited supply. Indeed there is no difference to the limited > supply >regardless of whether I own a boat and use my own mooring or I don't own a >boat and that potential mooring remains unused. Therefore the cost of mooring >by me on my >EOG mooring to BW is zero.
This is a very old problem in the real estate market. Imagine two properties, A and B. A has no (by land) access to a road, except over B. The owners of them start negotiating for a right of way over B to A. A says "I'm the only person who would ever buy such a ROW from you, as my property is the only one that will benefit. Since you have no competing buyers, the price of the ROW should be very low". B says "Without the ROW, the value of A is almost zero. As a result, the price of the ROW should be very high, actually approaching the market value of A if it had access". There was no consensus. Eventually, though, there was a precedent case, known as "Stokes vs Cambridge", which set out principles for valuing such a ROW. Leaving out the tedious details of the reasoning, the accepted convention is now that the ROW is worth roughly 1/3 of the value of A with access. The SvsC principles seem to me to apply quite well to the mooring example you give. BW demands 50%. Perhaps there is a case that that is a bit much. However, BW does appear to merit a significant cut (no pun intended). Nick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >The demand for moorings at any site varies enormously, with the seasons, >with the day of the week, with local events, with the weather. Unless >you have some spectacularly complicated system involving everybody >linked into some sort of computer mediated auction system that works >dynamically[1] you are never going to be able to set the price at >precisely the level that you sell just the right number of moorings. I agree. The charge can feasibly only approximate the market-clearing price. But I think that is much better than "free" moorings which are always fully occupied when you arrive. >Sell more moorings than there are, and why bother selling them? - you're >still on first-come-first-served, and have (now very) unhappy people to >refund. In fact, what tends to happen is that the supplier is likely to set a price slightly above the market-clearing one, to ensure there are always some vacancies. It is possible to be just a little more sophisticated at not much admin cost by simple measures such as checking the moorings later in the day and, if too many are vacant, lowering the price for later arrivals. >[1] - even if it does alter dynamically, what happens when I've bought >my mooring for 20p and settled down at 2pm, and Adrian turns up at 6PM >ready to pay a tenner? Am I cast adrift? See above. >[2] - and that in turn is mad: filling 5 moorings at a tenner each may >get more revenue than 10 at 1 quid each, but it leaves 5 people unable >to moor and 5 spaces empty - that cannot be right. See above. There is no need to operate the thing rigidly. >The problem with the market is that it does require both competition, >and the ability of new supply if demand and willingness to pay are >there. That's often not the case with moorings in towns, for example. It can be. If moorings were more profitable, riparian owners might well find it worth their while to create more of them. >First come first served is not "fair" - it penalises those who for some >bonkers reason actually want to do some cruising (I'm one - I rarely >stop before 6 or 7) but it at least maximises use and - for something >like moorings in a popular location that *has* to be the prime test of >any system. Maximising the use is easy. But that isn't the only criterion for a successful pricing/allocation regime. Maximising convenience and availability are just as, if not more, important. If I need something, it isn't much solace to me that it is priced very cheap but none is available. Steve Heaven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >But your "pay for" system doesnt guarantee him a mooring any more that the >current "first come first served" system. > >If there are X slots, there could be X people willing to pay "a couple >of quid" in front of him. If the price is set at the market-clearing level, then there will (almost, as it is hard to get it exactly right) always be one or two empty spaces everywhere. If the moorings are all full at £2, then the operator should raise the price to £3 for tomorrow and see what happens. A nice thing about this is that it is so easy and cheap to change the prices, as you can see at any petrol station. > No it doesnt "ensure that those with the greatest need get the >supply." It ensures that those with the greatest cash gets the supply NO! This is absolutely wrong, and a false assumption that seems to drive a lot of the opposition. It is as wrong as saying that if you make people pay for food then only the rich will eat. A visitor mooring fee is not a major purchase. If you are able to afford a hireboat holiday, or to own your own boat, the additional cost it represents to you is a tiny proportion of your total expenditure on your boating. What charging actually does is discourage some people (the technical term is "at the margin") from making the purchase. Note "discourage", not "force". Many boaters are quite indifferent to where they actually tie up, and will find it easy and painless to decide not to stop at a popular spot where there is a charge but instead to moor out in the countryside where there isn't one. And this isn't theoretical. On the Thames, most popular moorings are charged for at £6 to £10 per night. They are used by gin palaces and small narrow boats alike. No sign of use only by the rich. Anyway, relatively few inland boaters are rich or poor -- most are middle class. <George said much the same thing, so I hope he will excuse my not replying to him separately.> "John Slee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> instead of the moorings always going those who are happy to tie up >> at 2 p.m. every day (unlike most hirers, who want to see rather >> more of the waterway than that allows. Too bad for them, eh?). >'Twas ever thus. That hasn't changed in over 20 years - many is the >time when as hirers we were still looking for a mooring after sunset. And you think that is an acceptable situation? I don't. >BW have NO right to charge boaters, of any category, just so that they >can run a business. As a public body they are charged with providing a >service to the public. They serve us - not the other way around. I'm afraid you have been misinformed. BW is in fact a business, a government-owned company. It is directed by the government to charge for what is provides at market prices. Adrian . Adrian Stott 07956-299966
