Editor:
B.C. ferry commissioner Gordon Macatee announced on March 18 that BC Ferries fares will increase 1.9 per cent per year, each April from 2016 to 2020. While this represents some future relief from the four per cent increases of the last four years, it is of limited solace.
In the fall of 2011, Macatee conducted public consultations on BC Ferries. In January 2012 he reported that ferry fares had reached the tipping point and were imposing hardships on coastal communities and passengers and were causing a decline in ridership.
The provincial government responded by directing additional fare increases each April of four per cent in 2012, 4.1 per cent in 2013, 4.05 per cent in 2014, and on April Fools Day 2015, we get an additional 3.9 per cent.
Transportation Minister Todd Stone’s response to Macatee’s March 18 announcement was to say, “Fares cannot continue to increase as they have. We’re not just approaching a tipping point, we’re at the tipping point.”
The timing of Macatee’s and Stone’s tipping point assertions cannot both be correct, separated by three years and 17 per cent higher fares since Macatee’s original 2012 tipping point observation.
Stone recently announced the B.C. On The Move plan is to spend some $2.3 billion on transportation infrastructure over the next three years, $1.8 billion (78 per cent) of which is for roads.
In 2008, then radio talk show host Christy Clark criticized then Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon saying, “Our transportation minister seems to have an insatiable appetite for funding highways if they require blacktop. He seems perfectly at peace providing free ferries on inland lakes in B.C.. But he doesn’t seem to have the same affection for our maritime highway on the coast.”
It seems some things never change.
Jef Keighley, Halfmoon Bay
