Despite some lobbying attempts by the Ferry Advisory Committee (FAC), B.C. Ferries will not be changing its summer schedule to accommodate daily commuters coming from the Lower Mainland.
Starting June 1, B.C. Ferries will stop its daily 5:30 p.m. sailing from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale and replace it with a 5:50 p.m. sailing on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. Commuters on Tuesdays and Thursdays will have to wait for a 6:35 p.m. sailing.
Barry Cavens, a FAC member and former commuter, led the effort to hold onto the 5:30 sailing throughout the summer to allow commuters ample time to spend with their families in the evenings.
"I'm concerned about the people returning home. They've got families; they've got sports events. It's just another hardship for those people who can't necessarily sail at 5:30," Cavens said.
In his meetings with the FAC and B.C. Ferries, Cavens has learned the increased demand of passengers wanting to sail from Horseshoe Bay has made the logistics of loading and unloading for the Landale, Bowen Island and Nanaimo routes too crowded and complicated to maintain a 5:30 sailing. But Cavens said Coast commuters are the hardest hit by summer schedule changes.
"If they change one they have to change them all and I don't think they've had an appreciation up to now about how disruptive it is to people who want to commute from the Sunshine Coast," he said.
Cavens said if commuting is too hard, the commuters will be forced to move off-Coast taking their economic contributions to the Sunshine Coast with them.
Deborah Marshall, spokesperson for B.C. Ferries said she empathizes with Cavens and the commuters, but said there is little the company can do about it for 2009.
"In the summer time, you have 36 sailings departing Horseshoe Bay a day. We've got six ships and only three berths, so in the summer time it can be quite a challenge to schedule that," she said.
Marshall said in previous years, when there was a daily 5:30 p.m. sailing, the ships were consistently late, sometimes by 45 minutes, causing stress for passengers.
Marshall said staff in the scheduling department are looking into ways they can better accommodate daily commuters for the summer of 2010, but with Horseshoe Bay terminal being operated at full capacity in the summer, there was no guarantee.
"We are going to try to develop some options to make some improvements and it would impact the other routes as well so there's quite a lot of analysis that has to go on," Marshall said.
