North Island Express

[Hardy]

Unless there is a justifiable demand or desire for direct northern Island service, I would much rather see revenue spent on improving service on the existing routes. With the Inland Island Highway being slightly more accessible from Duke than Departure (this has been my experience anyways!), I would lobby for better service on Rte-30. We've kicked this around before, but perhaps an earlier sailing exiting Tsa to allow for a more timely arrival to say Campbell River ... 0330 from Tsa, 0530 at Duke and 0745-0800 thru the Comox Valley ... and yes, before anyone says it, I am thinking more like a $%*!@^ truck driver than a tourist (we really do tend to like driving on the roads while everyone else is still asleep!!).

[Northern Exploration]

Early sailings from TSA is a good idea. Plus during peak periods, why not a truck sailing from HSB to Duke (when there is berth free during the day) to make more space on the HSB to DB run. Take out the unused gallery decks and fill the upper deck with cars who may want to go to Ladysmith, Chemainus and Duncan. Much easier to get out of Duke to go south than DB during the mid-day. Revive the Mid-Island Express monicker for the route.

[Retrovision]

hardy said:

Unless there is a justifiable demand or desire for direct northern Island service, I would much rather see revenue spent on improving service on the existing routes.

Astute transit users around Vancouver, for example, know this feeling all too well, in our case with redundancies and other wastes of funding despite a desperate need elsewhere throughout the system. With such limited resources, we do need to focus funding with a sort of triage attitude; sorry, Michael, though your kind of innovative thinking should never be discouraged.

Black Ball came to town with the right game plan focussing on shorter crossings to undermine such a well established company as Canadian Pacific, and I doubt we'll be going backwards in this direction anytime soon, as much as I love the nostalgia of the opportunity to sail aboard a well appointed steamer from downtown to downtown.