Grumpy McLoughlin is not as ecstatic as you might expect.
When we met him last year, the owner of the Denman Island General Store lamented the way high ferry fares had choked the life out of the island’s crucial summer tourist season.
So now that the NDP have are rolling back fares on B.C. Ferries’ minor routes, he must be thrilled, right?
He hesitates: “It’s a good start … ”
Likewise, Priscilla Ewbank, whose Saturna Island businesses require her to spend $17,000 a year on ferries, says she’s grateful (“Any fare decrease is of value to our small local businesses, which in turn makes our communities more robust”), but why pay through the nose to begin with? Do you know how much fares add to Gulf Islands schools costs?
It’s not that users aren’t happy about the 15 per cent fare rollback confirmed for B.C. Ferries’ minor routes in the provincial budget. It’s just that it follows a doubling of fares since the Liberals sort-of-privatized the corporation in 2003, the rapid rise prompting coastal communities to cry uncle.
So maybe the are-you-happy question is like beating a guy with a stick for 15 years, then asking him if he’s grateful when you stop. Sure, but. …
“It’s just giving back some of what has been added onto the backs of passengers over the years,” says Saturna’s Brian Hollingshead, who co-chairs a ferries advisory group.
To be clear, he’s happy about the budget measures. In addition to rolling back minor-route fares by 15 per cent as of April 1, the budget freezes fares on the three major Vancouver Island-mainland routes. A 1.9 per cent fare increase that was due April 1 won’t happen. Ditto for a similar increase in 2019.
Also, the seniors discount on passenger fares, which the Liberals rolled back to 50 per cent in 2014, has been fully restored. Beginning April 1, those over age 65 can ride for free, Monday to Thursday (except for holidays; vehicle fare still applies).
All these measures, which were included in the NDP’s election platform, were previously announced, though this week we learned how much it will cost the province: $27 million in 2018-19 and $33 million in each of the two years after that.
“It’s something we have been looking for for a long time,” Hollingshead says of the pendulum swing. He says Gulf Islands seniors, who as a group are not as well-heeled as mythology would have it, will particularly benefit from a fare break that to many will determine whether they can actually afford the trip to town.
It’s worth noting, though, that the affordability question hasn’t been as prominent as it was a few years ago. In part, that’s because fare hikes have eased recently. In part it’s because B.C. Ferries has bounced back with some boffo ridership numbers, which have increased five per cent year-over-year for the past two.
Why? The weather was hot and the economy hotter. Wildfires in the Interior drove tourists to Vancouver Island last summer. So did the dollar or Trump or whatever else was luring Americans and keeping Canadians in Canada. On some routes — Campbell River-Quadra Island, Gabriola-Nanaimo — the trouble isn’t empty boats, it’s full ones, overloads a persistent problem, Hollingshead says.
Contrast that to 2014, when a Union of B.C. Municipalities study concluded that by driving ferry fares up, the government had been killing ridership, pushing B.C. Ferries revenue down — the opposite of what the user-pay shift was meant to do. That echoed the 2012 findings of ferries commissioner Gord Macatee: “Fares have reached the tipping point, imposing a hardship on coastal communities and passengers, and ridership has declined as a result.”
An example of that was the Denman and Hornby Island routes, where traffic fell 17 per cent between 2003 and the 2015. As the round-trip fare from Vancouver Island to Denman doubled — $66.35 for mom, dad and a couple of teens — the day-trip and weekend business dried up.
“If you’re coming from Seattle, it doesn’t matter,” says Grumpy (yes, that’s the name he goes by). “If you’re coming from Courtenay, it does.”
The 15 per cent rollback won’t change that, he says. “It’s still not enough to attract tourist traffic.”
He sees a double standard, with politicians more willing to loosen the purse-strings in vote-rich Vancouver: The province might have rolled back fares for coastal communities, but it wiped out bridge tolls entirely in the Lower Mainland.
Likewise, Ewbank wonders how the province reached the 15 per cent figure. “I remain convinced that the ferry service is our highway and I would like that rationale to be the bottom line for deciding what action to take.”
