Managing high demand with increased travel between Largs and Cumbrae due to reduced ferry fares is going to be a major consideration at a forthcoming Millport summit.

The Cumbrae ferry users group is having a meeting with Transport Scotland, local MSP Kenneth Gibson, and Cal-Mac to address the range of opportunities, and safeguards that will require to be put in place, as a result of the the Road Equivalent Tariff scheme (RET) changes.

Addressing the challenge of ferry capacity constraints in the future, is anoteher of the issues which will need to be addressed due to the RET.

At present, both Largs-Cumbrae, and Wemyss Bay-Rothesay routes offer people access to cheaper tickets by purchasing booklets of multi-journey tickets.

This ticket type will be replaced (along with saver returns and other forms of multi-journey ticket) by single RET tickets. The guarantee is that the price of an RET ticket will be competitive with the single-journey equivalent of a multi-journey ticket.

In most situations, regular users will find that the effective cost of a single journey has reduced under RET. And there will no longer be a requirement to purchase booklets of tickets at significant cost to access these improved prices.

The Scottish Ferries Plan has highlighted that there would be a requirement for some form of demand management and that this was well supported by a range of organisations with a significant interest in the ferry services.

At the forthcoming ferry groups meeting, Cal Mac will have the opportunity to bring forward proposals on how they intend to manage demand where there is excess demand.

The plan, which covers the future of ferries until 2022, stated: “Demand management will only be considered where projected demand on a particular route, as a result of the introduction of RET, indicates that this is necessary. Each community will be different in this regard. The operator will consult with the community and agree the level of demand management to be introduced. Demand management techniques will only be introduced if they are agreed by the community.” “It may be that for shorter crossings with a distinctive operating day it will be possible to distinguish between peak and off-peak services. Typically peak sailings will be around commuter times covering the early morning and later afternoon/early evening period, with services during the day and in the late evenings revert to off-peak.

“Proposals set out by the operator will be discussed with a range of stakeholders, including the local Ferry Committee or User Group, before they move to the implementation stage. As noted above, in introducing RET we will not make a distinction between residents and non-residents or visitors. The same principle will be applied when considering demand managements.

Bill Steele, of the Cumbrae Ferry Users Group, said: “There are four main areas which we are hoping to examine at our Transport Scotland meeting - where do people go before they get on to the ferry, how many people will be getting on the ferry, how many cars can the ferry hold, and where do the cars go when they go into the town of Millport. There are implications all over the place, and we hope to have a clearer picture of where we stand after our meeting with Transport Scotland.”