Poor service, lack of sailings, overloads

[Hardy]

The posts seem to keep coming up in "Ferries Busy", but that isn't the right place for it. Neil and I have had an interesting bout back and forth.

We also had the "Customer Satisfaction" thread, but nothing much happened there.

I figure we need to gather up all the b/itching and whining and counterpoints into one neat tidy area.

I don't have the almighty moderator powers to move the off-topic "ferries busy" posts ... but hopefully those of us that want to keep on railing about which sailings should have been added, or the general inadequacies of the current BCFS schedule can do it in a more compact area away from the actual postings about how busy the ferries are.

To that end, in response to Neil's last post in "Ferries Busy", perhaps this is just the dialogue that we need to create and the discourse we need to have. I would think that BCFS would NOT be looking at rewarding advance/reserved bookings with lower rates but that certainly is an interesting tact. Multi-tier fares can influence traffic patterns to a certain extent, but I thought that is what we already have with the Coast Saver sailings program.

And insofar as needing to revisit the Act and get further into what the responsibilities of all parties are, yes I agree that is a major step in the direction that needs to be taken. Whether we need to revisit the essential service levels, or rejigger the way that government subsidies are redirected or administered, or some combination thereof ...

There are no easy answers. There never are for the bigger problems. I am positive that there is an answer, but it is not going to be an easy one to arrive at.

The ferries are hard to pigeon-hole into private or public. Regardless, they are a vital link, have been referred to as an extension of the highway system. While this description is not perfect, it is pretty close and reflects the reality of the situation perhaps closer than any other description can.

What is the proper balance of user-pay and subsidy? Should major routes be subsidized to the same extent as minor routes? Is it a simple dollar figure or a percentage, or cost recovery?

We've analyzed some of these scenarios and numbers before and had some interesting back and forth. There are several differing points of view.

What level of service at what cost is the right level? What is too much to expect? What is too little to provide? Do we really need 3 major routes to the Island? Should there be round-the-clock or late night sailings?

All this is fair (fare?) game for discussion .....

[Hardy]

<bump>

No takers yet over here in this new thread?

So I put forward some suggestions (many tongue in cheek) in the "Ferries Busy" thread. We've had a pretty lively debate running over there, due to, well, ferries being busy. But it was off topic. Neil and I squared off and sparred a few rounds. Yet no one seems to want to venture into the fray over on this side of the fence now.

So ... where do we go from here? Should we reduce the SCHEDULED sailings down to ESSENTIAL levels? Should we INCREASE the peak season (hourly sailings) later into the year? Do we reward people for booking reservations and having predictable travel patterns, or should we raise the reservation fee? Of course, I am using the WE in the above sentences in a rather loose sense, as if "WE" (of this forum) actually can influence someone in the halls of power at the QoFS.


Have at it ... let's have some discourse on this and perhaps come up with a few suggestions that perhaps might be forward-able to QoFS.

[Low Light Mike]

2 things:

1) Reservation system:
- I would like to see a reduced-fare for reservations. But to prevent abuse (ie. last minute cancellations), there should be a cancellation deadline, or a high cancellation fee. So if there were a system that promoted genuine commitment by customers to a certain sailing, you'd think that this would help the company manage customer-demand.

2) My personal soap-box:
- I think that skilled & general labour shortages will be an ever increasing handicap to adequate service-levels. I think we will continue to see ships sit idle, because they can't be adequately crewed on a short-notice.....or at all. I genuinely believe in this trend, and think it is going to become very pervasive in our BC Economy. So this means that even if the BCFS company wanted to implement more sailings, it might not have the manpower to do so.

.....the 2-cents worth from this almighty moderator..... ;D

[Retrovision]

Unfortunately, according to Hahn in his recent interview with Bill Good on CKNW 980AM, BCFS plans to both raise reservation fees as well as reduce the number of spaces available. As an advocate of social transportation you might think that I agree with this, but after mulling it over with my folks, who are concerned similarly, I cannot agree with the reduction of reservations and the raising of the fee on the basis that it's too elitist as was the argument given by Hahn. Raising the fees makes the service less accessible but if more spaces were made available and a reasonable fee were implemented it would do the ferries like any should-be social transportation system well to be able to have this 'luxury' tax for a service still accessible to the common person - given enough non-reservation spaces offered - in price in order to have a reliable source of income to stream back into the system from those who pay for the privilege. Don't get me wrong though, I do not trust BCFS to stream such a source back into what needs it and not into profits, but I'm speaking in ideals after all. An ideal reservations system to me would be like those of 'subscription' transit services offered by public transit systems such as into San Francisco, where people who can afford it pay for a priviledge while their fee goes directly back into both upkeeping their privilege as well as a significant portion going back into the the system of the general public for who the social transportation network is there in the first place.

[hwy19man]

Lack of sailings, Part 1.

This is about route 30 and its upcoming late night sailing this Saturday for the Lions football game.

I posted a similar response in the service notice thread. The inconsistency is hurting this promotion, do it for all the Saturday Lions and Canucks games or simply don't bother.

[Neil]

Hardy, I'd be curious to know what the prevailing public attitude was toward CP and Black Ball service in the '50s, or just CP service prior to Black Ball's arrival. As in- what did people expect, and what level of service did they feel they were entitled to. Did either company put on extra service when traffic warranted; were there people sometimes left behind at the end of the day, and were there chronic overloads at peak holiday travel times.

Since the advent of publicly owned ferry service in 1960, we've developed a certain sense of entitlement to what we feel are acceptable levels of service, and we've gained a certain proprietary attitude to our ferries, and our ferry system. Many years where extra runs could be put on, when warranted, without a strict dollars and cents accounting, got us used to a more responsive system, and it's been a rather rude shock to citizens and users that our newly 'privatized' corporation now declines to provide anything above minimum service levels without financial justification. We tend to assume that overloads mean poor service. Even people who quite rightly bemoan society's over reliance on the automobile seem to expect that BC Ferries' agenda should be determined by vehicular traffic's right to get on a sailing exactly where and when they demand it. Is it unconscionably bad customer service by BC Ferries when overloads occur, or should we be trying to alter traffic patterns to even out the peaks and valleys, with reservations and variable pricing to better utilize the capacity we have?

Karl's recent trips to Powell River, as well as the reported traffic figures, have pointed out that the Queen of Burnaby in particular, and often the Earls Cove- Saltery Bay ferry as well, are sailing around virtually empty on a regular basis. Outside of the major routes, virtually every route on the coast has periods, some of them quite regularly, where hardly anyone is aboard. It's an expensive system to operate, and the Ferry Services Contract dictates that a lot of those runs can't be cancelled, even though, in the case of the Powell River - Comox ferry, four round trips every day of the year, on the Queen of Burnaby, is absurd. The empty runs get no notice on this board- compared to the outcry over people being left behind- but they're very expensive.

So, I wonder, just how do we determine what we're entitled to, and what constitutes bad service. After being on this forum for a couple of years, I don't think us ferry fans have the objectivity to really have a valid opinion on this. There's not a single ferry commuter on this board, no one who lives or works on the islands, only one commercial user, and only a sprinkling of people who regularly use the ferries for other than fan trips. People who really depend on the ferries, or who can look objectively at all the aspects of running an efficient, responsive transportation system, are not really represented here.

Let's pretend we had a more American model of public works financing, where projects and expenditures are often put to the voters in the form of initiatives. Let's pretend that one of those initiatives was put to the voters, framed something like this:

Are you in favor of raising the subsidy for BC Ferries to provide (x amount) extra scheduled capacity on all routes, to eliminate or significantly reduce overloads at peak times, without reducing under utilization of capacity at non- peak periods?

Putting that question to all citizens from Port Renfrew to Fort Nelson would be a good way of determining just what the BC populace expects, and is prepared to pay for, in their ferry system. I suspect that opponents would make a strong case about all the empty ferries, and how changes in usage patterns would be more desireable than using tax dollars to eliminate waits for coast residents and tourists, and commercial traffic. But I could be wrong.

There have been really good arguments made that BC Ferries is unresponsive in scheduling and service levels, and that patrons deserve much better. I'm just not sure that, if you separate the 'fan' complaining and the proprietary attitudes about our ferry system from the equation, people are actually willing to pay for the level of service they seem to demand.

[Hardy]

Valid points Neil, and I will respond in more detail as I have the right amount of time - I don't want to give your post a "brush off". As for CP/BB, I was not around in those days. I will, however, ask around to some others that may have been and used the system back then.

While you make a point in comparing the Earls Cove route to the Mainland routes, and it is a VALID point, I think that you are comparing oranges to bananas -- they are both fruits, but one is yellow and tube shaped while the other one is round and orange. The volume of traffic and the population served is VASTLY different, and I think that it is wrong to try to equate the two of them.

That said, your point is valid - should we examine the minimum service levels required on that route? Perhaps sail the QoB with a restricted license to reduce overhead costs on the under-utilized sailings? Cut back the number of trips during slow season? I won't take anything like that OFF the table.

Another contentious issue, and this is "just the way it is" in a society such as ours, is that people who live in GOLDEN are less likely to want a tax subsidy for a VICTORIA ferry system. Let's not mix the INLAND ferries into this quite yet, but you see my point? Why should PRINCE GEORGE residents be wanting to subsidize NANAIMO ferries? The intangible is that the ferry system serves OTHER than residents ... yet it is NOT a "REQUIRED" services, such as public health or education. Hard to have provincial taxes allocated to it using this logic ... yet, there's a fine edge to walk along. It's a VERY complicated issue to address, and there are no easy answers.

As I stated, I will cover this in more detail later, but these are the MAIN points I see in responding to your post ... more later....

[Barnacle]

Well, you could argue that the folks in Prince George aren't truly subisdizing the ferry system; after all, what are the odds that the tax base in PG is actually completely funding the maintenance and upkeep for the highway that runs to it? (We have this argument with Eastern Washington all the time. )

[Neil]

I know this regional jealousy/envy thing comes up often, and it's really unfortunate. I'm quite happy to have my tax dollars paying for infrastructure in the Peace district, and I hope they're clear about the need to run ferries on the coast. If people were only willing to look after their own backyards, we wouldn't have a very civilized society.

[Balfour]

You make a very good point, Neil. We can't be too selfish in a civil society such as ours.

[Hardy]

Being altruistic is a noble gesture -- however, getting the general public to come to this conclusion is the hard part. NIMBY-ism is rampant in all corners of the province, and neither PG nor the Coast are exempt from this.

This is a less than perfect world that we live in, and regional inequalities will continue to be exacerbated ESPECIALLY in the case of dividing an evershrinking provincial funding PIE. One region will not want another to have a slice that is bigger than theirs, and whether or not some regional residents agree to subsidize the "greater good", there will always be the large majority that will want the funding to be allocated IN THEIR AREA as opposed to 1000km away.

[Neil]

This is a reply from BC Ferries to the Ferry Commissioner, regarding complaints and questions about the Bowen Island run:

www.bcferrycommission.com/Bowen_Island_Memo_Signed_FINAL_3_.pdf

[Low Light Mike]

Thanks Neil. The Q&A between these 2 parties was interesting to read.

....more information is a good thing. I was interested in the ticket sales cutoff issue and in the 5:00am deadhead sailing.

I think that these types of Q&A between these 2 parties are one of the highest forms of accountability that we can see from the current ferry organisation. ie. I take their responses to the Ferry-Commissioner seriously.