Further service cuts abandoned
Pain shared: Major routes have also lost sailings
Coastal Extortion, Spirit of Delays, Queen of No Other Choice — call them what you want, but keep the ferries in the water and passengers will be happy.
A day after the reaction to its name-our-new-ships contest drew laughter, BC Ferries users have another reason to smile — the corporation is quietly backing away from planned cuts to its major routes.
Except not everybody is thrilled. People in small coastal communities that took the brunt of service reductions over the past couple years smell a doublecross. They felt the pain of deep cuts, only to learn that others are getting off without a scratch.
Not so, says BC Ferries. The majors have lost eight per cent of their sailings over the past seven years, and reducing service even more can’t be done without jeopardizing business. The lost passenger revenue might wipe out any savings from tying up the ships.
“It just doesn’t make sense to cut further,” says BC Ferries’ Deborah Marshall.
The news was cheered at the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, where they have long argued that squeezing passengers on the major routes is counter-productive. “We’re ecstatic,” CEO Bruce Carter said Thursday. This all goes back to April 2014, when BC Ferries pared $14 million worth of sailings from 16 minor and northern routes. At the time, it was announced that a further $4.9 million worth of sailings would be cut from the three major Vancouver Island-Lower Mainland runs in 2016.
It’s the second step that Ferries is now abandoning. The corporation says it will find the $4.9 million elsewhere (one example was seen this past winter, when smaller Coastal class ferries plied the Swartz Bay-Tsawwassen route, saving both fuel and crew costs).
The alteration in course doesn’t sit well with some.
“People are feeling a little choked,” says Brian Hollingshead, chairman of BC Ferries advisory committee for the southern Gulf Islands.
Communities served by the northern and minor routes were rocked by those 2014 service cuts — about 7,000 sailings a year — and protested that they were being made with no analysis of the impact on either BC Ferries or the coastal economy.
Still, the communities absorbed the cuts on the understanding that those served by the major runs would share a little of the pain. And it really would be relatively little, Hollingshead says: $4.9 million sounds like a lot of money but represents less than two per cent of the $265 million cost of operating the major routes each year, “It’s really a drop in the bucket.”
He thinks it should be possible to shave some sailings without customers really noticing much.
For example, the Duke Point-Tsawwassen run lost $24 million last year with ships that were, on average, only half-full.
But BC Ferries says it began trimming sailings on the major routes in 2008.
Swartz Bay-Tsawwassen used to see more even-hour sailings at off-peak times. Off-peak Saturday night and Sunday morning trips were lopped at Duke Point. The last weeknight Horseshoe Bay-Departure Bay sailings were dropped in slow periods.
Also, remember that the minor routes are subsidized by the majors, which bring in 80 per cent of revenue, says Marshall.
Sell a hamburger on the ferry to Victoria, and it helps offset the cost of running the boat to Gabriola or Thetis.
She is echoed by the chamber’s Carter: “The more people we can get on the major routes, the more people we can get to pay for the minors.”
BC Ferries never did pinpoint exactly which sailings it planned to cut from the major routes in 2016.