It’s always been hard to explain the underlying reasons why people in the Interior ride ferries for free, while coastal residents pay top dollar.
Is saltwater travel considered a luxury for which charges are warranted?
Are the inland ferries so small that it’s not worth the effort to charge passengers?
The reasons go back so far in history it’s hard to discern the set policy. The short answer is: That’s the way it’s always been.
They operate under private contract with the government, roughly similar to the arrangement B.C. Ferries has on the coast, but that’s about all they have in common.
Coastal residents turn green with envy when they check the ministry of transportation’s inland ferry web page and see the highlighted message: “All inland ferries are free of charge to users.”
More than a dozen of them are scattered around B.C., most of them running five- to 20-minute routes. When B.C. Ferries needs a new ship, it goes through an elaborate process with an independent commissioner to justify the need. If it’s a big one, the company then generally goes off to Europe and gets it built.
When an inland ferry wears out, the ministry just orders another one. The newest one — MV Columbia — was a $30-million project that was not only built in B.C., it was built in the thriving shipbuilding hub of Nakusp.
The topic arose in the legislature recently and Transportation Minister Todd Stone found a reassuring statistic to ease coastal jealousy. The $20-million-a-year inland ferry system gets an investment of $19 a year per vehicle from B.C. taxpayers, while the $750 million-a-year coastal system gets an investment of $23 a year per vehicle, he said.
There’s long been a call to make B.C. Ferries “part of the marine highway system.” But it’s never been clear exactly what that means. It suggests operating them like the inland ones — free. But that’s never going to happen. The more likely connotation is that it means upping the provincial subsidy and cutting fares. But Stone said in the house it would solve nothing, because the two systems are so different.
All that was prologue to Monday’s exchange, where Stone was asked about B.C. Ferries CEO Mike Corrigan’s views on how complaints about fare hikes are creating negative publicity that is hurting tourism.
In a lengthy interview with Sechelt’s Coast Reporter, Corrigan said the public campaign against high fares could become a self-fulfilling prophecy that hurts coastal economies by reducing tourism.
“At some point in time it becomes almost a pile-on effect,” he said, as tourists avoid ferries because of the negative publicity about fares. He expressed similar views in an April 17 letter to the editor of the Times Colonist.
Corrigan said he knows people who think the fares are too expensive and aren’t visiting, even though they don’t know what the fares are.
“I’m not suggesting that communities and ferry advisory committees shouldn’t continue to talk to government and lobby government,” he said, “but I think we have to have the balanced approach going forward so we don’t kill the marketplace.”
NDP MLA Claire Trevena on Monday called that a “novel” explanation. “It’s not because fares have risen more than 100 per cent. It’s not because service has been cut … It’s because the opposition and the media talk about it.”
Stone said he’s repeatedly acknowledged rising fares are cutting traffic.
Stone said traffic volumes have been steadily increasing over the last number of months.
“We’ve had some very good months — December, January, February, March,” he said. “The numbers are up, and they’re up largely on the majors, but it would appear that volumes have stabilized across the entire system. That’s part of the solution as well. We’re very hopeful that those numbers are going to continue to increase.”
Corrigan said in the Coast Reporter interview: “If you type B.C. Ferries into Google and the first four stories that appear are about fares and service reductions, who’s going to want to come out here?”
The first three returns from a Google news search of that phrase Monday returned various versions of the story about Corrigan warning about fare complaints.
