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Post by Queen of Nanaimo Teen on Jul 18, 2016 19:11:08 GMT -8
This is terrible! I've planned my first ferry trip in the last 4 years from July 23-27 in order to ride on the B's, and she's being pulled out of service! *grumbles to self hopelessly*
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Post by bigcountry on Jul 18, 2016 22:08:27 GMT -8
anyone else feel BC Ferries would be better off cancelling Route 9a, sending the Bowen Queen to cover the I-Sky, leaving the NIP and Texada alone, and sending the Quinitsa to Swartz Bay to have her on stand by in anticipation for Route 4 and 5 being busier with more through fare traffic?
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Post by Low Light Mike on Jul 18, 2016 22:15:42 GMT -8
anyone else feel BC Ferries would be better off cancelling Route 9a, sending the Bowen Queen to cover the I-Sky, leaving the NIP and Texada alone, and sending the Quinitsa to Swartz Bay to have her on stand by in anticipation for Route 4 and 5 being busier with more through fare traffic? I like that idea, a lot. It's a WSF style of shuffle, that we rarely see in BC.
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Post by Dane on Jul 18, 2016 22:17:40 GMT -8
Certainly an interesting idea. I'm always a bit wary at the notion of cancelling one route to support another that (obviously) doesn't want to deal with cancellation; what I like about your idea is the somewhat diminished capacity reduction effect.
I'm curious if they could operate the Quinitsa out of Swartz Bay from both a capacity and crewing perspective. I was really surprised to read that Quinitsa would be working the Sunshine Coast at first, which not withstanding some tests when she was coming online at new build must be the first trip out that way.
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Post by bigcountry on Jul 18, 2016 22:24:40 GMT -8
I'd imagine coming up with a second crew at Saltery Bay would be just as difficult as coming up with an extra crew at Swartz Bay... and they would have all week for training
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Neil
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Post by Neil on Jul 18, 2016 22:27:22 GMT -8
Not viable for such a short term- no crews at Swartz Bay trained on Quinitsa.
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Post by bigcountry on Jul 18, 2016 22:37:14 GMT -8
and there is a crew trained on her at Saltery Bay?
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Neil
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Post by Neil on Jul 19, 2016 9:53:48 GMT -8
and there is a crew trained on her at Saltery Bay? Since she'll have been sitting at Saltery Bay for a week, chances are, yes.
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Neil
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Post by Neil on Jul 19, 2016 10:34:54 GMT -8
It looks like, in this case, BC Ferries is doing their best to accommodate Texada's needs. Dedicated sailings by the Island Sky, as opposed to just stopping in on the way across the strait. Apparently, travel is also going to be FREE, both on the Island Sky and the water taxi from Van Anda. Schedule from the Texada facebook page.
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Post by WettCoast on Jul 19, 2016 12:38:10 GMT -8
It looks like, in this case, BC Ferries is doing their best to accommodate Texada's needs. Dedicated sailings by the Island Sky, as opposed to just stopping in on the way across the strait. Apparently, travel is also going to be FREE, both on the Island Sky and the water taxi from Van Anda. Schedule from the Texada facebook page. Still no actual service notice on the BCFS official website? I think they need to communicate ...
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Post by Low Light Mike on Jul 19, 2016 14:19:22 GMT -8
Good info in Powell River Peak news story, HERE...and still nothing on the BCFS website.
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Post by Curtis on Jul 19, 2016 14:43:04 GMT -8
And the Official News Release is Here.
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Neil
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Post by Neil on Jul 19, 2016 15:43:49 GMT -8
Oddly, in one sense it could be argued that this schedule actually means a slight increase in service for Texada. Seven of the eight sailings to and fro are dedicated- only the first also carries Comox traffic. Given that the Island Sky's vehicle capacity is 125 as opposed to the NIP's 50, they've covered the usual space available, with a bit to spare, since there are normally eight round trips during the week. Add to that the Van Anda water taxi service and the no charge passage, and you have to say well done, in this case.
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Post by Kahn_C on Jul 19, 2016 16:23:31 GMT -8
No Texada-Comox direct trips (other than that first one) though, some people really liked those (and would have probably been handy for all the Diversity Festival traffic that'll be heading back to Comox on Monday/Tuesday...)
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Post by Dane on Jul 19, 2016 17:09:52 GMT -8
If people are complaining they don't have a direct Texada - Comox connection, which they never have when "times are good" then I feel that those critiques can be fairly ignored. Someone will complain about every solution. BC Ferries has done well here, other than the ongoing mechanical issue with the Burnaby.
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Post by roeco on Jul 20, 2016 12:28:08 GMT -8
I wonder why they have never had the 3 port sailing on a regular basis especially in summer....even have one trip do it a day..opens up some options.
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Post by paulvanb on Jul 22, 2016 11:57:18 GMT -8
Waiting for the Queen of Oak Bay at Departure Bay. Missed her morning sailings from Departure Bay due to mechanical problems.
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Post by Low Light Mike on Jul 26, 2016 9:56:00 GMT -8
Regarding the Earls Cove - Saltery Bay route fiasco for July 23rd to present:
Problem: - Island Sky is away on Comox Route - It is summer - Replacement is slow & small NIP (with deck weight issues) and Quinitsa
Context: - Apart from bringing up Bowen Queen, BC Ferries has done all it can do, re present availability of vessels.
Customer issue: - BCF website gives no indications of wait times happening each day - Customers are experiencing multi-hour waits at both terminals. ie 6 hours or more. - BCF website gives no indication of these extreme wait times - News media gives no indication of these extreme wait times
The only source I've found for current info is the first-hand accounts on the "BC Ferries - Our Marine Highway" facebook group. That page has become the ONLY source of good up-to-date information on what is actually happening on Route-7 this week.
BC Ferries' lack of updating or media releases on the traffic lineup situation is puzzling and unacceptable. Lack of mainstream media coverage is also puzzling and unacceptable.
If not for that Facebook group, the public would have no idea of what is really happen on Route-7 this week.
Is anyone else here following this story?
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Post by WettCoast on Jul 26, 2016 10:30:25 GMT -8
Regarding the Earls Cove - Saltery Bay route fiasco for July 23rd to present: ... Is anyone else here following this story? While I am not following it all that closely, I would add that BCFS's performance in very quickly eliminating any redundancy in the fleet is part of the problem. Where is the Wack when you need her?
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Neil
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Post by Neil on Jul 26, 2016 10:52:21 GMT -8
Yes, I'm following it, through the facebook sites, including the Texada one, where there's also been discussion about insufficient parking and access for anyone with special needs trying to use the water taxi.
I've never seen BC Ferries post wait warnings on their website, aside from the major terminals. One time last summer on Hornby, I counted 150 cars lined up the better part of a mile from the terminal- families with kids, a hot day, no washrooms... and certainly no website notices. The notices about the NIP or the Quinitsa running x minutes late due to 'peak demand' don't tell anybody anything worthwhile. Last night at 11:30 I noticed on ship tracking the NIP heading toward Earls Cove- nothing on the website about an extra sailing.
People travelling with families or passengers with special needs absolutely have to know how long they're going to be sitting in a car somewhere with minimal or no services available. BC Ferries has done what they could in terms of moving boats around, but their communication since has been pathetic. There is no doubt there will be a lot of tourists who will find an easier place to get to on their next vacation
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Post by northwesterner on Jul 26, 2016 11:45:31 GMT -8
Context: - Apart from bringing up Bowen Queen, BC Ferries has done all it can do, re present availability of vessels. I sort of agree they've done all they can do short term, but this is utterly a failure of long term contingency planning on the part of BC Ferries. All of us that have been kicking around this forum for a long time know how difficult it can be to predict a mechanical failure on a vessel. We've seen both agencies (WSF and BCF) get bitten, hard, with an unexpected failure in the middle of the peak season. It's time to start expecting the unexpected. You'll note that after years of running too lean of an operation, WSF is now expecting the unexpected and keeping a little more capacity on hand. BCF has done a better job overall of having spare capacity on hand for the summers, and typically a break down doesn't cause huge ripple effects. It has always surprised me how few major service catastrophes happen in BC given the larger size of their fleet. However, they've cut back on that extra capacity the last couple of years, and this summer is a great example of what can happen. But is the alternative having a whole fleet of minor vessels that rarely see service (quick: what was the Albert J Savoie's last regular assignment? Who knows...)? Dane mentioned over on the facebook group that well, the Queen of Burnaby is going to be gone in six months, and not doing a full repair on the hub seal at the last drydocking was financially prudent. That's a reasonable position, and while the replacement of that very tired ferry will help the overall fleet age and reliability, the bigger problem is BCF's inability to recover from these situations. What if next week the Island Sky blows engine, has an electrical failure, or drops a rudder? That's a new vessel, but we've seen these things happen to new and newish vessels in both Alaska and Washington. The single biggest problem with BCF's contingency planning is the inability of the route based crews to be cross trained on other vessels in the fleet. This makes it nearly impossible for BCF to do a multi-vessel shuffle overnight to restore service as soon as possible. Vessels that never leave their home route basically have one crew trained on them, the crew on the home route. BCF could have done a shuffle like this: Quinitsa to Vesuvius-Crofton Howe Sound Queen to Campbell River - Quadra Powell River Queen to Earls Cove - Saltery Bay But they can't do that. Because two of those vessels haven't operated anything but their home route for well over two decades and the third, until recently, was in the same situation. However, capacity wise, the above shuffle would be far superior to what we've got now. BCF should have a contingency chart indicating a decision tree and vessel movement plan for the failure of one minor vessel on any of the minor routes, with a back-up identified. And the crews on the receiving route will need to be up to speed on that vessel. Yes, the training costs money. But you're running a transportation system here, and if you're not transporting anything because you can't afford the training, then there are real problems.
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Post by Dane on Jul 26, 2016 13:35:45 GMT -8
What I'm also keenly watching the future of the Bowen Queen. I'm nervous that the "third" Salish will knock it out of service. Weeks like this certainly demonstrate the overly thin margins that the fleet operates on.
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Post by roeco on Jul 26, 2016 22:00:31 GMT -8
I would think the Bowen Queen may be the last to go...as someplace on the fleet replacement plan I think it mentions both Powell River Queen and Mayne Queen..! And I believe NIP is in their someplace too! I don't recall seeing Bowen Queen?? Im sure their gonna need a replacement vessel for both Texada and Quadra Island soon anyways. Does anyone know for sure the replacement timeline on Bowen Class vessels?
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Neil
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Post by Neil on Jul 26, 2016 22:11:55 GMT -8
northwesterner: Maybe I misunderstood your point, but the Albert J. Savoie was sold years ago. Perhaps someone will correct me, but I think it's been quite some time since BC Ferries had any major or mid-sized vessels in reserve for the summer. Maybe they had a V on hand right after the Coastals were delivered, but I'm not sure that even then the boat would have been operational. The Liberals simply have not provided BC Ferries with any funds for back up.
I share Dane's concern about the Bowen Queen, and not just because I had a very enjoyable excursion to Long Harbour and back yesterday (and chatted with 'ferryman' Chris onboard as well.) It seems that the prevailing mentality is to retire a vessel when a new one is added to the fleet, so it is indeed a concern that the three Salish vessels might displace the 'Burnaby, 'Nanaimo and the Bowen Queen. I'm wondering if next year's election might be a positive factor. Hell, Christy's already done an about face on millionaire foreigners buying property here. Ferry traffic figures are up, revenue is up, and I wonder if perhaps they might throw coastal communities a bone by loosening the purse strings slightly on the ferry system.
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Post by northwesterner on Jul 27, 2016 10:34:42 GMT -8
northwesterner: Maybe I misunderstood your point, but the Albert J. Savoie was sold years ago. Perhaps someone will correct me, but I think it's been quite some time since BC Ferries had any major or mid-sized vessels in reserve for the summer. Maybe they had a V on hand right after the Coastals were delivered, but I'm not sure that even then the boat would have been operational. The Liberals simply have not provided BC Ferries with any funds for back up.
I share Dane's concern about the Bowen Queen, and not just because I had a very enjoyable excursion to Long Harbour and back yesterday (and chatted with 'ferryman' Chris onboard as well.) It seems that the prevailing mentality is to retire a vessel when a new one is added to the fleet, so it is indeed a concern that the three Salish vessels might displace the 'Burnaby, 'Nanaimo and the Bowen Queen. I'm wondering if next year's election might be a positive factor. Hell, Christy's already done an about face on millionaire foreigners buying property here. Ferry traffic figures are up, revenue is up, and I wonder if perhaps they might throw coastal communities a bone by loosening the purse strings slightly on the ferry system. The Albert J Savoie line in my comment was an example of how at one time (twenty years ago) BCF had a fleet of minor vessels that were barely used, and were, I guess, back-ups. But they were used so little that no one can really remember her actually being in service. It's not financially prudent. That being said when you're dealing with the large capital assets like these, the instinct is to always assume 100% availability. After all, there's a huge line item in the budget for maintenance, right? Why can't those guys keep these ferries running? Setting your budget based on this scenario, however, is bad news for all involved. Every vessel is going to have an individual probability of some major mechanical / catastrophic failure that is greater than zero. When you figure those across the fleet While these are all independent events and you can't sum the probabilities, the size of the fleet indicates you should realize that something like the Queen of Burnaby situation was not "something that couldn't have been predicted" but something that should have actually been expected. Maybe not the exact, specific failure. But something major, knocking a vessel out of service for longer than a week, sure. And what's the contingency plan for that? As we've seen this week, its poor (or non-existent). I'd attribute it to two root causes: non planning, financially, and strategically for the probability of a failure (in a vessel sense) and not cross-training crews across the fleet, which severely hinders flexibility. And Neil I don't disagree with you that the current gov't has taken a chainsaw to the BCF operating budget, leading to a series of suboptimal decisions made by the corporation to get by. But a new gov't and increased funding for BCF isn't going to magically solve all of these problems. If BCF's operating budget increased by 15% tomorrow do we think any of that money will go to improved contingency planning and possibly the maintaining of a vessel past retirement for back-up purposes (Bowen Queen...)? I don't think so, and that's because it requires a recognition of a problem. I'm not sure the BCF administration is there yet.
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