Paul wrote: > IMHO it will never be possible or economic to introduce such a charge > nationally except at high density = popular mooring sites. To introduce > it nationally would require an enforcement officer to visit every part > of the network every day. The maths is simple. There are over 2200 > miles of canal run by BW, assuming the men used some sort of motorised > bicycle and could cover 40 miles (80 mile round trip) a day it would > require over 50 officers. Assuming that each man cost BW £15k per year > in wages and administration that is a £750k wage bill. Or put another > way they would have to charge for 30000 days of overstaying to cover the > wage bill let alone fuel, depreciation of bicycles etc.
Surely they only need to visit each location every 14 days? In any case the point is to warn people that this could happen then police it most aggressively in known trouble spots. Bit like, ummm, mobile speed cameras (not sure this analogy will popularise my idea ;-) ) Another thought which occurs is that BW already have lots of patrol officers wandering up and down the cut noting who is where on their hand held computers (indeed I saw one today) it would not take rocket science programming to download the data at the end of the day, compare boat locations to previous information and build action lists (or even send automated bills out by post!) That way there is almost no additional cost. Steve NB Bream
