Gibsons resident Ryan Medd has performed a public service by shining the spotlight on how BC Ferries is gouging and inconveniencing Sunshine Coast residents and other coastal people who opt to travel on their “marine highway.”
Medd has started a petition on change.org calling for priority vehicle loading for residents of ferry-dependent communities. “Residents,” Medd told reporter Christine Wood this week, “shouldn’t have to plan on being at the ferry two hours in advance of the actual sailing, nor should we have to pay more via reservation, to access this essential service.”
Reservations have become a floating cash cow for BC Ferries, as evidenced by the phenomenal amount of deck space being allocated. For Route 3, the company said this week that up to 50 per cent of deck space can be reserved on the Langdale side. That means only about 175 spaces would be available for passengers who did not pay for reservations. As Medd points out, the choice is to either arrive at the terminal hours in advance or pay the reservation fee – $15 if it’s a week in advance, $18.50 if it’s less than seven days up to the day before sailing, and $22 if it’s the same day.
If the passenger volume is heavy on both sides of Howe Sound, travellers might also feel the need to reserve a spot on the Horseshoe Bay side, where up to 40 per cent of deck space has been allocated for reservations.
That works out to between $30 and $44 added to the one-way ticket price of, say, $83.70 for a standard vehicle with two passengers. Using the $18.50 figure both ways, the total cost for one round trip across a saltwater pond would be $120.70.
Isn’t that marine highway robbery? And what makes this form of piracy especially slick is that long waits and lousy outcomes generate additional revenue. Failure to provide reasonable service is richly rewarded. What a business model!
We agree with Medd that there’s a serious problem here, but we don’t think penalizing commercial deliveries, tourists and visitors is the way to go. The sounder approach is to limit the number of reservations to a much lower ceiling (so that people with medical appointments, for instance, can reserve early), while dropping fares and getting serious about improving the fleet.
Ferry watchdog Jakob Knaus recently estimated that if the province restructured BC Ferries to operate as a public service on a break-even basis, fares could immediately go down by 14 per cent. If Ottawa fixes the grossly unjust disparity between Atlantic and Pacific ferry subsidies, fares could drop substantially more.
Improving the fleet – so that reservations are no longer an essential part of the BC Ferries travel experience – will require a government with vision that’s committed to long-term public infrastructure investment, instead of lobbing red herrings such as a fixed link study before an election.
