Editor:
Wendy Thomas, in last week’s letters, suggested that a referendum on ferries vs a fixed link to the Coast may be in order. Yes, it’s a good idea in principle but one that requires we be fully and properly informed on the options.
Many of us can agree that we are very poorly served by our current ferry service. Hearing that there will be new, larger vessels some years in the future seems disrespectful of our community, and interim patches such as hourly passenger-only ferries have never even been mentioned by BCF.
But solutions can be found if there is the will to do so. Some are driven to suggest that a fixed link is the solution.
Maybe, maybe not. A bridge spanning Howe Sound would be a multi-billion, multi-year project requiring constant maintenance. We would need to travel a considerable distance from Langdale even to get to the bridge, and then down the Sea-to-Sky highway to reach Horseshoe Bay.
Investing not only in new vehicle and passenger-only ferries but in the port infrastructure and an integrated bus service could well be lower cost and quicker; but until we develop and cost all logical options we simply don’t know.
So clearly we need our representatives to take a detailed look at the advantages and disadvantages of each. Until they have done so we are uninformed and thus unready to make any choice pro or con.
Julian Taylor
Gibsons
