Winning Moves Isle of Wight Monopoly Board Game, Advance to Port St Mary, Tynwald Hill or TT Grandstand and trade your way to success, 2–6 players makes a great gift for ages 8 plus

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The board game, which has been officially launched, features many familiar Isle of Wight locations. The first two red squares on the board would be replaced with streets in Freshwater where the property market is up and coming. House prices are on the increase, the last 12 months alone have seen an increase of 6.5 per cent.

Isle of Wight Monopoly | Toys | Toy Street UK Isle of Wight Monopoly | Toys | Toy Street UK

A class of Isle of Wight school children have helped to create the island's own version of Monopoly. More than 30 locations feature on the board which were chosen during four months of research on the island by the game's makers following the initial approach by the school children. There is also a little loophole which I haven't tested myself, but which I thinkwill work. Thanks to Dan for pointing this out (please blame him if it doesn't work). Greig, Malcolm and McQuaid, Ronald W (2005) The impact of ferry services on an island economy. In: European Regional Science Association Conference)

Fifth Demonstration: 5 December 1934, Lymington, Hants

I disregarded any free ferries (there were very few of these) or ferries that do not publish their tariff on the internet. I included all the Solent crossings, and all the ferry crossings I could find in this region, plus an arbitrary selection of other crossings starting in the UK, including those going to foreign countries. I tried to find crossings of varying lengths to test the theory that price was connected to distance travelled; so I sought out short crossings and long ones. I measured the ferry distances using Google Maps and approximate routes. Actual distance travelled may be different, especially over longer distances. I focused on UK crossings but also sampled a few outside the UK to see if they were very different (some were, so for my final dataset I excluded crossings that did not include the UK*). I also tried to include a number of chain ferry crossings because I wanted to compare the pricing of Cowes Floating Bridge too.

Monopoly: Isle of Wight | Board Games | Zatu Games UK Monopoly: Isle of Wight | Board Games | Zatu Games UK

The most expensive ferry in the world: a comparison of the cost of Scottish ferries to cross-Solent ferries was undertaken by Neil Kay, Emeritus Professor in the Economics Department, University of Strathclyde in January 2011 The longest journey in the data is the Southampton to New York cruise (far right point). Choosing this was difficult given the wide range of cruise prices, but I chose a return voyage at a standard rate. I had expected that to be far off the chart for price, but amazingly it is pretty close to the line. Understandably it is higher than the expected level, possibly because the facilities on board are significantly better than a ferry, but nonetheless it is interesting to see that the price for a cruise is not dissimilar to that of a normal ferry anywhere else – albeit over a hugely longer distance. Future work The Frequent Visitor Pass holders have to come into the park with you. They can't just lend you the pass. However, I can't see any reason why they couldn't walk out five minutes later. It’s often mooted that mile for mile, the Solent is the most expensive stretch of water to cross in Europe and … it’s quite believable.” On The Wight Solent crossings are in the middle of the chart for cost. Cowes Floating Bridge is fairly high up the list though, but neither come close to either the Hayling Ferry or the Norfolk-based Reedham Chain Ferry, both of which could safely claim to be among the most expensive crossings in the UK per mile. Conclusions

If you want to have a go, there are some obvious next steps for this analysis. Firstly, the dataset could be made larger, and maybe include some truly international routes. There are plenty of other ferry services not on the list. If there are any that are wildly different in price from the predicted levels shown in Figure 2 then it would be very interesting to see why. I excluded the international routes I found because I had difficulty comparing the data sometimes, and I also was not certain that comparing prices between currencies was fair. Others will understand this kind of thing better than me.