The following letter was sent to Transportation Minister Todd Stone with an edited copy sent to Coast Reporter.
Honourable Minister Todd Stone:
Have increasing hikes in fares and cuts to service been imposed in order to improve an essential service, or to remove costs from the B.C. budget?
W.A.C. Bennett created BC Ferries as an essential, affordable, reliable and accessible system, linking communities within the province, providing equity in transportation. It was an extension of the highways.
Since it became a Crown corporation, against Bennett’s vision, the mandate for the ferries has disintegrated. Reliability, affordability and accessibility have declined.
On the Horseshoe Bay/Langdale route, recent cuts to Sunday sailings is a perfect example of this debacle. Now the ferries sit idle between huge gaps in sailings, with commuters waiting, ship engines running, employees being paid. Efficiency has decreased! Travellers are more frustrated and, inexplicably, schedules are still not maintained.
Our ferries are aging, standards of on-board service and ship maintenance are decreasing, and fares are rising.
While bus transportation runs until past midnight every day, regardless of usage, the last ferry leaves Horseshoe Bay at 9:45 p.m. This precludes people from the Sunshine Coast from attending late night events in the Lower Mainland, theatre, concerts and family or community events, without the added expense of overnight accommodation. Surely this is a disservice to peninsula communities, as well as the cultural economy in the Lower Mainland.
We need to return to the original function and purpose of our ferry system. It is essential to a healthy and prosperous province. It facilitates tourism and quality of life for coastal communities. The service allows money and people to flow freely throughout our province.
Dismantling the ferry system will cause economies in coastal communities and urban areas to suffer.
Mary Baker, Roberts Creek
