Every year, thousands of drivers, often in SUV’s, try to get on to a tiny island which thousands of others walk and cycle round, their potentially lovely day spoiled by those same drivers. There’s a well-run bus service from the ferry slip to the town with hundreds of bicycles for hire and lots of wee cafes to relax in. I’ve been there more times than I can remember and never felt the need to take a car. These days, I’d struggle to get round the island on feet or wheels but there’s no way I’d be bullying my way round it in a car.

Despite the above, the local media and politicians love to use the car queues, a handful of times in a year, to attack the SNP’s ferries.

Here what they don’t tell you:

The Herald 23 January 2026, had:

Hospital visit fears as CalMac cut Cumbrae ferry sailings

The Largs & Millport Weekly News had

Ferry timetable changes will see regular maintenance times at intervals throughout the day – but fears have been expressed that the service interruptions will harm the fragile economy of the island. The ferry operator has cited safety as the reason for the proposed reduction in timetabled service from four per hour to three per hour.

Three ferry crossings every hour for a population of 1 293? There are bus services to mainland villages far less frequent than that.

How well used is the service? I can only base this on 2023 or 2024 figures as those for 2025 are incomplete as far as I can see.

In 2024, most recent data, 707 480 passengers and 195 105 vehicles used the service.

https://assets.calmac.co.uk/media/hswlebs3/2024-annual-carryings.pdf

There were around 24 000 crossings in 2023 so something similar in 2024. https://corporate.calmac.co.uk/en-gb/about-us/route-performance-reports/largs-cumbrae/

The crossings were almost entirely made by the MV Loch Shira, capacity 32 cars and 250 passengers capacity so, over the year, capable of carrying 6 million passengers and 768 thousand vehicles rather than the actual less than 1 million passengers and less than 200 thousand vehicles!