More bloodletting for tapped ferry users

BC Ferries: Even if fare increases are capped, suffering customers can expect to pay more and get less in return

The BC Ferries commissioner recommends a cap on passenger fare increases at 1.9 per cent for the four years starting in 2016.

Forgive the impertinence, but by now it’s a bit like travellers being told they should be grateful that their tormentor will begin hitting them on the thumb because it will feel so much better than being hit over the head.

How does this rosy prospect square with what’s actually coming for ferry users?

Well, the cap will come after an already approved 3.9-per-cent price bump that kicks in on April 1, which itself follows 4.1 and four per cent in fare increases in 2013 and 2014.

So, what the travelling public really looks forward to is an 11.5-per-cent hike in the cost of using the marine segment of our provincial highway network. Added to the two recent increases, this means fares will have climbed about 20 per cent since 2013 with more than half of the rise yet to come. The ferry system already recovers more than 80 per cent of its operating cost from passengers, far more than urban transit systems recover through fares, for example.

Back in November, Premier Christy Clark said ferry users were pretty well tapped out when it came to these rising fares. She said, to be exact:

“Frankly, I think the fares are about as high as they can get without really impacting ridership.”

That was then. This is now. Fares are supposedly as high as they can go without further damaging the customer base — except that they are going up 11.5 per cent. Service cuts have been about as deep as they can be without further enraging the travelling public — except that the beleaguered ferry corporation has now been told to extract half-as-much again from costcutting as it did during the last round.

Haha! as they say in Twitterville, another merry joke on the rural rubes.

And the punchline is that apparently there’s yet more blood to be squeezed from the ferry-using public.

In addition to paying more, ferry customers should expect less service. The ferry commissioner has also instructed the corporation to extract another $27.6 million in “productivity improvements.”

This can’t come out of thin air. That leaves yet more belt-tightening on routes to communities, some of which complain they are already in an advanced state of asphyxiation.

It follows $54 million in efficiencies that the ferry service achieved through draconian service cuts which have already damaged coastal sectors relying on provincial marine links to sustain tourist traffic and the timely movement of goods.

Meanwhile, what happens if oil prices spike again? Then, presumably, travellers can expect fares larded with yet another round of fuel surcharges.

Back in November, the province vetoed the “independent” ferry corporation’s plan to save money by axing its major moneymaking route between Horseshoe Bay and Nanaimo.

Ferries CEO Mike Corrigan said then he was running out of options. Faced with the lowest passenger loads since the 1990s, the corporation either had to raise fares even more and risk further flight by price-resistant passengers, reduce service further (that strategy brought a 20,000 name petition to the legislature last month), or get more government funding.

Transport Minister Todd Stone said there would be no more service cuts. Finance Minister Mike de Jong said budgets were too tight to spring for more money. Premier Clark said fares couldn’t go up. Now we’ve got rising fares and the prospect of more service cuts.

Not to be cheeky, but why does it feel like the Three Stooges are charting the course for the Good Ship Lollypop?

Added to the two recent increases, this means fares will have climbed about 20 percent since 2013.