Opinion: BC's coastal ferries need passenger-only vessels, not just for cars

Mar 8 2023, 12:27 am

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Callum Campbell, who is the former director of the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure’s Inland Ferries services, and the founder and CEO of Greenline Ferries.


Early last week, the provincial government committed $500 million to BC Ferries for the next four years to improve fare affordability and help reduce overall emissions of the fleet.

That funding will keep annual fare increases to about 3%, rather than the 10% or more that was forecast had that funding not been provided. Keeping fares reasonable seems like good news, but this investment in the status quo car ferry system is a costly missed opportunity and it means people in British Columbia will pay a high price in the long run.

Running a car ferry system in the 21st century will never be as cost-effective (even in relative terms) as it was when it was established many decades ago. The car ferry system we have today was introduced in the 1960s when nearly everyone had a car, when diesel was cheap, and when crews were abundantly available.

None of those things are true anymore.

This means today’s car ferries are expensive to buy and expensive to operate. Costs to run a car ferry service will likely get higher and higher over time.

Car ferries are significant emitters. The annual emissions from the coastal car ferry system today are 50% more than the combined emissions of every provincial ministry and every BC crown corporation. Yet the pathway for decarbonization is extremely challenging.

BC Ferries

BC Ferries (Shutterstock)

bc ferries island class victoria inner harbour

BC Ferries’ third Island Class vessel arriving at Victoria Inner Harbour on July 22, 2021. (BC Ferries)

For a limited set of the smaller ferries with shorter runs, converting them to all-electric is a good option, and preparatory work is underway now to allow those vessels to charge from shore. But for the large car ferries that provide the main links between Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island, there’s really no good option to reduce emissions in the short term. Electrification of that fleet might be possible, but it’s going to come with a huge cost to install massive batteries, as well as shore power.

So where possible, it makes sense to build capacity outside the car ferry system, where greener technologies are more feasible.

Finally, by maintaining the current system we will pay the price when it comes to flexible and convenient travel. Over the past 20 years or so, Metro Vancouver has been rewired with new public transit options: the original Millennium Line, the Canada Line, the Millennium Line’s Evergreen Extension to Coquitlam, and soon the Millennium Line’s Broadway Extension to Arbutus. Express bus routes have been established. We’ve got Modo, Evo, Mobi, Lyft, and Uber, and more bike lanes than ever running through the city.

The whole point of these public transit services is to help people get around quickly and affordably without having to use a car. For many in Vancouver who by choice or necessity lead a car-free life, accessing the car ferry terminals in suburban locations can be a hassle. And long waits between sailing times mean that coastal journeys take much longer than they need to. For most people, it no longer makes sense to travel through these ferry terminals.

MS Medstraum electric ferry tram project

The electric-battery MS Medstraum ferry vessel in Norway. (TRAM Project)

MS Medstraum electric ferry tram project

The electric-battery MS Medstraum ferry vessel in Norway. (TRAM Project)

The provincial money could have secured us a different future. Imagine a fleet of electric ships that operate without noise or vibration, which have a shared hub at TransLink’s SeaBus terminal at Waterfront Station in downtown Vancouver, and bring you directly to places such as Gibsons, or Bowen Island. Bikes and wagons can easily be taken on board.

Those living in Vancouver get to their final destinations in about the same time as it takes to take a bus out to Horseshoe Bay. Think mountain biking on the Sunshine Coast as a day trip, or brunch on Bowen Island, and home in time for dinner.

This people-focused infrastructure to complement the car ferry system could be a reality for Vancouver, in the same way it is for many cities around the world and across North America, which are pivoting to new realities.

Seattle’s Kitsap Fast Ferry program, for example, supplements the Washington State Ferry system and has many benefits to ferry users as well as the environment. The key to making high-speed passenger-only ferries work is to connect directly from the centre of one community to the centre of another and provide seamless connections to car share, ride-hail, and other transit options on both sides.

Passenger-only ferries are shown to reduce door-to-door travel time and they bypass traffic congestion and wait times associated with car travel.

Crucially, passenger-only ferries also use fewer crew members — making missed sailings due to crew shortages less likely — and not only are they greener (especially if all-electric), but they are also more agile to meet demand.

kitsap transit fast ferries seattle f

Kitsap Transit’s fast ferries in Seattle. (Kitsap Transit)

washington state ferries kitsap transit ferries

Washington State Ferries’ car vessel (left) and Kitsap Transit’s fast passenger-only ferries vessels (right). (Kitsap Transit)

Overall, passenger-only ferries are ideally placed to help grow the system in a new way – one that’s better aligned with the changing world around us. The United States has recently approved a $1.25 billion investment specifically to further expand the deployment of passenger-only ferries in urbanized areas like Seattle and San Francisco.

The provincial funding announcement is surely a good thing for many people’s pocketbooks in the short term. But $500 million is a significant amount to put towards the status quo without even the promise of additional benefits for ferry users. For that amount of money, it would serve us better to address some of the underlying issues with our legacy car ferry infrastructure that are going to keep driving costs higher and higher for the foreseeable future, so we don’t find ourselves in this exact same situation in another four years once this existing injection runs out.

The funding bypasses an opportunity to expand coastal ferries in a way that will signal we are bringing our best tools to face our most urgent challenges — with one important tool being passenger-only ferry service.

Under the right conditions, we could look forward to a flexible system of all-electric passenger-only ferries that connect communities with each other and allow passengers to seamlessly access onward modes of transportation. In other words, a coastal ferry system focused on people, not just cars. This would buy us reliable and affordable service not just in the near term, but in the long term too.

GET MORE URBANIZED NEWS
Want to stay in the loop with more Daily Hive content and News in your area? Check out all of our Newsletters here.
Buzz Connected Media Inc. #400 – 1008 Homer Street, Vancouver, B.C. V6B 2X1 [email protected] View Rules
Guest AuthorGuest Author

+ News
+ Politics
+ Transportation
+ Opinions
+ Urbanized
ADVERTISEMENT