B.C. Ferries will pocket the new half-price seniors’ fares next month and use the money to reduce pressure for future fare increases affecting all ferry travellers, the Ministry of Transportation said Thursday.
The province subsidizes all social programs on B.C. Ferries, including seniors’ and students’ discounts, and travel for people with disabilities and for medical purposes, the ministry said in a statement. The seniors discount program was directly funded by B.C. taxpayers to the tune of $14.9 million last year.
When seniors rode for free, the province paid B.C. Ferries a full fare on their behalf.
B.C. Ferries will continue to collect that full-fare subsidy and starting April 1 will also charge seniors 50 per cent of their fares Monday to Thursday.
The province will continue to provide B.C. Ferries with the full amount of the estimated funding that the company would have received if the current program, with a 100 per cent fare discount, had not been changed, the ministry said.
“The ferry system will receive additional monies from the 50 per cent passenger fare that would be charged to seniors,” said the ministry statement.
The new fares paid by seniors will offset pressure for fare increases affecting all passengers beginning in 2016.
“B.C. Ferries is getting all the money they would be getting from the government [seniors’ subsidy] and they also get, almost as a gift, 50 per cent fares from seniors,” said Brian Hollingshead, Saturna Island representative on the ferries advisory council.
B.C. Ferries and the government benefit from the arrangement, said Hollingshead.
The bill for the free rides for seniors has been growing substantially and it was in the interest of both B.C. Ferries and the ministry to ease out of it, he said.
“There are a lot more seniors travelling and fares are going up quite a bit,” he said.
“Whatever B.C. Ferries gets from the seniors is all bonus money because it’s what they would have got from the government anyway, but it’s going in a different pocket.”
The revelations came to light following the release of documents by B.C. Ferries on its social cost program for the last two fiscal years.
In 2012-13, B.C. Ferries provided 1.5 million free rides for seniors, their fares paid for with $14.9 million from the provincial government.
B.C. Ferries is projecting a 20 per cent drop in the number of seniors riding at half-price fare versus the number who rode for free under the program that’s being cancelled, said spokeswoman Deborah Marshall.
