I think you'll find I did. I said that the figures come from the Dft Port Statistics and Stena themselves.
However you are missing the point. The point wasn't is the rail market sizeable the post was about getting the people there!
The point is that it's a small flow in the grand scheme of things, and any public investment has to show a real benefit.
Clearly Stena are not concerned about such a tiny market, and Scotrail can probably find a better use for their rolling stock, so where is the money to subsidise better rail/sea links going to come from?
Indeed for the rail & sail market to grow by 25% over the 10 year period 1998 - 2008 is good in contrast to all those car and bus passengers which clearly deserted the route in droves.
Bandying stats about is all very well, but the fact is that if I had 4 customers in my shop last year, and I grow the business by 25%, I still only have 5 customers and will undoubtedly make a huge loss and go out of business!
It is the total market that matters and if it's not economically viable, something has to change.
I said the stats came from the Dft and Stena. Check them out yourselves they are available but for domestic short sea you have to go to a different series. The freight data I recall was in section 3. Indeed I rang the department up. The analysis was done in 2010-11 for a project that was independantly scrutinsd so I am sorry that you dont like the data but it is the only set out there!
It's not the data per se, but how you ar eusing it and the conclusions you are drawing from it.
Now if you want current data and just to prove how the current arrangement appears to be useless the RMT calculates numbers using the ScotRail link are down to around 10k. Two years ago it was 59k.
I don't think anyone disagrees that the new arrangements since the move to Cairnryan are worse than they were previously for classic rail and sea foot passenger traffic. It's no surprise if traffic has fallen substantially. Faced with a transfer from train to coach, many people who still want to travel will just switch to travelling throughout by coach.
Stena wanted to improve their core business, and that meant that a small (3%?) share of their market ended up being disadvantaged.
For what its worth I would fly from Belfast to London. I don't care for long convoluted train journeys and when I go down to the south coast I never go by train. Too expensive, too difficult and takes forever.
I suspect that your view is shared by the vast majority of other people who need or want to travel between Northern Ireland and the south of England.
This is exactly why the market for foot traffic, particularly by rail, has shrunk. Sinc epeople who want to take their cars over can't fly, this is why the road market has increased. As a result of this, the rail ship facilities at Stranrear, serving a tiny proportion of the overall traffic between Scotland and NI, have been abandoned in favour of better facilities for lorries and cars at Cairnryan, and a shorter, more efficient sea journey.
It's fine to moan about that, but nothing is going to change until or unless the market changes again. I don't know what the future is, and many people have made themselves look foolish by making predictions!
When all is said and done doesn't this debate essentially come down to crying over spilt milk?
Would it not be better to concentrate on developing a future for the Stranraer line?
Yes, and I have argued for this. I have been sad to see the demise of traditional harbour stations, built specifically to connect with ferries, but it has been inevitable. What we need now is to secure the Stranraer line for the future by redesigning the timetable, and fare offerings, to make it work as a gateway to a beautiful region of Scotland rather than merely as a ferry terminal.
Maybe it should have been different with constraints being placed on low fare airlines and Stena forced to remain at Stranraer or nationalised if they put the two fingers up to that! But we don't live in a world where that is possible, we have to live in this one.
Exactly, we cannot ignore the realities of our times. As I said, anyone who wants to curtail budget airlines is effectively on the way to committing political suicide!
No amount of keynsian economics will change that! 
