(Letter to BC Ferries President and CEO Mike Corrigan.)
Dear Mr. Corrigan:
We are a classroom of middle year high school students on the Sunshine Coast who are concerned about 12 to 17 year olds being charged as adults on BC Ferries. Being that our class is home-schooled, most of us are taking educational trips on the ferry at least twice a month. The cost to families can get very expensive when all of the children are being charged as adults.
As a class, we are writing to you because we feel it is unreasonable to charge an adult fare, as we are clearly not adults. We are full-time students and do not have full-time employment to help pay for this increase in fare. On BC Transit, six to 17 year olds are charged roughly half the price of an adult fare. Why can’t this be the same on BC Ferries?
An adult in Canada is 18 years and above, yet we have to pay extra money to go on the ferries because we turned 12. We insist on change. We can’t understand why a 12 year old has to pay more than an 11 year old. We can’t think of any reason to charge children for adult fares other than to increase earnings for BC Ferries.
The ProjectSPIDER class of 2015-16 and other families on the Sunshine Coast would like to see the new fares being implemented by the time the new summer schedule for 2016 comes into print. We would like to see that the adult ferry rate starts at 18 years of age, not 12. We look forward to this change being implemented on our ferry system.
The ProjectSPIDER class and the rest of the Sunshine Coast will wait with anticipation for your reply.
ProjectSPIDER middle year students
