WE HAVE learned that the telephone survey used to calculate visitor numbers for Canal & River Trust has been scrapped, as it was not showing enough visitors!
We understand the visitor numbers are now guessed by a panel, that immediately increased the already silly number by a further 25,000.000 to impress the government that the canals are a national asset by attracting so many people.
Using commuters
However those on the panel obviously confused themselves and the public by counting commuters using a short-cut in the cities as it is the quickest route from A to B, and are not actually visitors, with even that figure grossly exaggerated.
As reported yesterday in narrowboatworld the number of visitors the panel would have us believe visit the canals every year is 385,000,000 that equates to 527 visitors to every mile of the Trust's waterways every day!
Only a few
Emails we are now receiving, of which some are being included, show that the people using the waterways—the boaters—realise just how ridiculous is the figure with only a very few actual visitors being seen.