Cafe Society: I’ll build the river ferries, says Bob Clifford

He sells supercats around the world, but it’s close to home where Robert Clifford really wants to make waves.

Café Society Incat chairman Robert Clifford and Chico Roll $2.50 Photograph Eddie Safarik

WHAT do you get when you cross a world-leading ferry builder with a Battery Point resident? With Incat chairman Robert Clifford, you get a big-picture man who wants to solve Hobart’s traffic woes and get to his workplace at Derwent Park more quickly.

Incat makes state-of-the-art passenger ferries, employing 650 staff to fill catamaran commissions from clients worldwide, so it’s no surprise Clifford supports a Derwent ferry service to help decongest our city streets.

He also is proposing major changes to car traffic routes in Hobart. He supports a Hobart Northern Suburbs Railway and, more controversially, a cable car for kunanyi/Mt Wellington.

Clifford paints his vision from The Marina Cafe at Prince of Wales Bay, where the Incat shipyards sprawl over a huge site.

Last March, the State Government paved the way for Metro to run a new ferry service between Bellerive on the Eastern Shore and Sullivans Cove, for which a $2 million scoping study is under way. When the Tasman Bridge closed recently for final works on the pedestrian Bridge of Remembrance linking the Domain and Hobart Cenotaph, a temporary ferry service proved popular and created quite a buzz with its captive clientele.

Clifford opposes a single route service run by Metro, though, saying it shares little with his bold vision for a full river service, and that it is doomed to fail.

“It will be a disaster,” he says. “If you want to prove it won’t work, do exactly [what the State Government is planning].”

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His vision is for a passenger service that stretches upriver to Bridgewater and down to Sandford, Blackmans Bay and Opossum Bay, where a car ferry would be an option.

“They are never going to build another bridge [across the Derwent south of the city], so if you are going to expand down there it’s got to be by ferry,” he says.

Metro buses would feed the ferry service. “For Bellerive, Metro should do at least two trips feeding the ferry before making a third trip back to the city, taking traffic off the Tasman Bridge and putting passengers on water.”

Further afield, he thinks “kiss and ride” family drop-offs to the ferry would be ideal for commuters. And tourism income would offset the commuter service. “There is no money in commuter ferries,” he says.

He produces a map showing 19 proposed stops on the River Derwent for small, solo-operated ferries carrying a maximum of 50 passengers.

Clifford says he will build the fleet, starting with half a dozen 12-metre vessels, if a chartered operator will run it and the State Government funds the terminals.

He thinks a similar model would work on the Northern Suburbs Railway Line, which would offer a commuter service also offset by tourism income. He is offering to run this service and broker tourism deals to support it.

He says there has been “absolutely no meaningful action” by the Government to solve peak-time road traffic issues. “There’s no doubt traffic is far worse in the last two years, and the next two years are going to be worse again,” Clifford maintains. He shows me a scale model of his proposal for a series of Macquarie and Davey streets intersection submersions, saying it is gathering dust while traffic gets worse.

He says the streets are ideal for short cross-street tunnelling, and that pedestrians could still access all streets, crossing on footbridges or through tunnels.

He thinks proposals for major cross-city and harbour tunnels are preposterous. “The talk of [long] tunnels is just nonsense because we can never afford that,” he says.

Another of his plans diverts the Southern Outlet’s northbound (as opposed to city or Eastern Shore-bound) traffic from the top of the Southern Outlet on to a bypass running along the north-west flank of Knocklofty to Lenah Valley, where it would spill on to wide existing roads including Giblin St.

“That would keep 10-15 per cent of the northerly traffic [out of the city] at a time the southern suburbs are growing rapidly,” he says.

Clifford also supports a cable car for kunanyi/Mt Wellington, though not its proposed terminal in South Hobart nor its route across the Organ Pipes. He says Tolosa Park at Glenorchy would be a better starting point.

With cruise-ship numbers growing exponentially, he wants better day trips for visitors, including a combined train and cable-car expedition.

“We complain about cruise tourists not spending any money, but if you only offer them an ice cream that’s all they are going to buy.”