OZschwitz dock shock: How a water cab became a ferry

FOR the past four years Shane Kearns has been piloting his four boats into the bays and inlets of Sydney Harbour.

With the largest vessel seating only 32 passengers, Mr Kearns believed he was running a modest water taxi service, not a fleet of ferries.

But yesterday he was forced to cancel his plan to begin a ''Rozelle Rocket'' service between the inner west and the city because the NSW government decreed that his vessel was, indeed, a ferry and liable for docking charges of up to $30,000 a year.

''Last week we were all set to go,'' he told the Herald.

NSW Maritime had given his vessels a safety check and he had passengers booked several weeks in advance for a service that would whisk them from Rozelle Bay, near the end of Johnston Street in Annandale to a small pier at Campbell Cove on the western side of Circular Quay, near the overseas passenger terminal.

But on Friday Mr Kearns was told he would have to pay $112 a day in ''booking fees'' for using the pier - a sum that would make his proposed service, with its narrow profit margin, unviable.

A spokesman for NSW Maritime said: ''The wharf booking fees are designed to ensure that an operator using public wharf space books a space and you do not get services piling in on each other.''

He said that because the Rozelle Rocket would run to a timetable it was no longer operating like an ad hoc water taxi.

Mr Kearns argues that whether he is running a water taxi or a ferry, he is still carrying a maximum of 32 passengers, taking at most three minutes to load and unload at the little-used wharf in Campbell Cove.

NSW Maritime is now negotiating with Mr Kearns to resume the service and will make a new offer on booking fees.

The Rozelle Rocket grew out of an appeal by the commuter group Ferry Alliance for the Inner West Region for local ferry transport. When Sydney Ferries could not provide it, Mr Kearns stepped in.

The opposition transport spokeswoman, Gladys Berejiklian, who was backing the Rocket, said the decision to reclassify the water taxi service as a ferry and slug it with booking fees was a combination of bureaucratic meddling and opposition to competition on the Harbour.

''This is consistent with other decisions made on ferries, which are designed to discourage competition. The government cannot provide a service but they want to stop others from providing it.''

LNK

Quote :: ''This is consistent with other decisions made on ferries, which are designed to discourage competition. The government cannot provide a service but they want to stop others from providing it.''

Statist scum!

Vomit

OZschwitz dock shock: How a water cab became a ferry

OZschwitz dock shock: How a water cab became a ferry

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