Ferry fees are drowning waterway commuters
Advisory group lays bare the rising costs of transport for those who must travel by sea
Coastal ferry fares rocketed by nearly 10 times the rate of inflation even as the Liberal government was extracting more than half a billion dollars from the ferry corporation, a new report shows.
From 2003 to 2016, ferry fare increases vastly outstripped annual increases in the provincial cost of living index, says the Southern Gulf Islands Ferry Advisory Committee. It’s a committee representing 51 municipalities and regional districts that rely on ferries to connect them to the rest of B.C.
Over that period, B.C.’s cost of living index rose 18 per cent. The minimum increase in fares on the most heavily used routes was 69 per cent, more than three times the inflation rate.
For travellers between the Lower Mainland and the Gulf Islands, the increase was more than five times the inflation rate. On some routes, the gap was even greater. Some fares increased by 164 per cent, about 9.1 times the rise in the cost of living index.
The ferries service a region that contributes 36 per cent of the province’s annual tax revenues but gets back a scant six per cent in government spending on transportation — including ferries, says the B.C. Chamber of Commerce.
Coastal ferries have carried about 293 million passengers since 2003, roughly the equivalent of moving the entire provincial population 68 times.
Over that period, annual provincial government contributions to the ferry system — they call it the government service fee — dropped, while the province was simultaneously taking almost $500 million out of the ferry system in dividends and loan costs, says the B.C. Chamber of Commerce.
But auto insurance is another story. Transport Minister Todd Stone told the legislature in response to complaints that keeping ICBC rates affordable was a top priority.
For some constituents — those who use the Coquihalla, say, to get to and from Stone’s or Premier Christy Clark’s Interior ridings — it seems government is all about applying downward pressure on ICBC rates. When it comes to drivers who must use ferries to get from one stretch of public road to another, though — people who live in NDP leader John Horgan’s or Green leader Andrew Weaver’s ridings, for example — it’s squeeze the travellers’ wallets until they bleed.
A constant refrain from the Liberals has been the need for users of B.C. Ferries to recover operating costs. It’s important to make a distinction here. Operating costs involve what it actually costs to run the system, as opposed to servicing capital debt or paying the province a dividend. The business plan for 2017 calls for B.C. Ferries to pay $6 million in dividends.
In 2016, the advisory group’s statistics show, B.C. Ferries recovered 101 per cent of its operating costs at the fare box — passenger fares were more than $580 million while total operating expenses were $574 million. Wait, does that just happen to be a $6 million difference?
Meanwhile, fare box operating cost recovery in B.C. under the Liberals exceeds by a huge margin the fare box recovery of operating costs for comparable major ferry systems.
According to the ferry advisory group’s brief but fascinating report, Washington State Ferries recovers about 70 per cent of operating costs from passenger fares. Norway’s ferry system, which deals with a similar coastline as B.C.’s, recovers 73 per cent. Alaska’s Marine Highway system recovers a scant 25 per cent.
In comparison to B.C. Ferries, TransLink fares recover only 41 per cent of operating costs from fare boxes. B.C. Transit, which supplies transit bus service outside Metro Vancouver, recovers even less at 31 per cent.
This entirely selective policy of draconian cost recovery from ferry users at the fare box has had an equally draconian economic impact on individuals and communities, the advisory group reports.
It says that as ferry fares vastly outstripped the rate of inflation, ferry traffic between the Lower Mainland and the Southern Gulf Islands declined more that 15 per cent — it still hasn’t recovered to what it was in 2003 — and island real estate markets slumped.
“Weekenders and part-timers are coming over less frequently and the decreased number of tourists who do visit are spending less on our islands because they are spending more on ferry fares,” the advisory committee reports. “Jobs have been lost as many businesses have closed and others have reduced their hours of operation.
“Ferry fare increases have had a real and increasingly devastating impact on our communities.”