Bryan Wallis lives less than an hour away from a BC Ferries terminal, but when he needs to get his 33-foot RV from Vancouver Island to the B.C. interior, he staunchly refuses to use it.
Instead, the 64-year-old makes it a point of driving two hours south to Sidney, B.C., where he can catch a once-daily car ferry to Washington State — and from there swing back into Canadian territory.
It’s a roundabout journey, to be sure: In addition to two border crossings, the route can add an extra 200 km to the trip. But by eschewing BC Ferries for its American equivalent, the sea journey only costs $387.52, versus the “staggering” $573.16 charged in B.C.
“Lay it out on a table in $20 bills, and then ask yourself; ‘this is what I’m throwing away,’” said Mr. Wallis, describing his unique method for making financial decisions. “You’ll go ‘holy crap,’ that’s a lot of money.’”
BC Ferries, the system of 36 vessels servicing Canada’s West Coast, has become unusually expensive over the last 10 years. Its government subsidy has ballooned by more than $20-million a year, fares have risen by as much as 100%, and as per one recent study, the combined effect has sapped an incredible $2.3-billion out of the coastal economy.
HandoutOne of the 36 vessels that BC Ferries has servicing Canada’s West Coast — at an increasingly high cost.
There are excuses for why this has happened, of course: a lagging economy, the strong Canadian dollar, BC Ferries even speculated once that it was because people are not “getting in their vehicles like they used to.” But to locals, these all ring a bit hollow considering that, almost within sight of BC Ferries, the Americans run a ferry system that carries the same number of passengers in the same waters — and all for a fraction of the cost.
“When I moved here 25 years ago, people talked about the ferries being an inconvenience,” said Tom Walker, a former mayor of the Vancouver Island community of North Cowichan. “Now they say ‘we can’t afford to catch it,’ and they’ve kind of forgotten about the inconvenience.”
Of late, the southwest coast of British Columbia has actually become one of the few places on earth where car ferries are now becoming cost-competitive with helicopters.
Helijet, a helicopter airline flying Sikorskys from Downtown Vancouver to Downtown Victoria, occasionally offers seats for as low as $99, tax-included.
To take the same trip by car on a B.C. Ferry, it costs a surprisingly comparable $71 — not to mention the costs of gas or the minimum three-hour travel time.
Just to the south in Washington State, the helicopter business is not nearly as vibrant. Washington State Ferries’ Anacortes to Sidney vessel departs from virtually the same place as the Victoria-Vancouver B.C. Ferry — and travels a route that is more than 50% longer — yet costs only $57.16.
A more dramatic example is the 10 km voyage between Coupeville and Port Townsend, where Washington State Ferries charges a return fare of $24.05 for a car and driver. On BC Ferries, the equivalent fare on the miniscule 2 km crossing to Denman Island is $34 — 41% higher for a journey that is 80% shorter.
In a 2010 report, Washington State Ferries crunched the numbers on how it compared to its Canadian cousin — and found that it beat BC Ferries on virtually every possible indicator.
Washington carried more cars, more passengers, had more on-time departures, covered the same percentage of its budget with fares and boasted a per-passenger government subsidy of only $3.49 to BC Ferries’ $5.86.
In November letter, BC Ferries CEO Mike Corrigan told the B.C. public that it was incorrect to make an “apples to apples” comparison with their U.S. neighbour.
Geography is a big reason: While Washington mainly uses its ferries to shuttle commuters on short hops between dense population centers, BC Ferries is tasked with running “lifeline” ferries into remote corners of the Northern Coast.
The M/V Queen of the North, for instance, famously sunk in 2006 while completing the 15-hour voyage between Prince Rupert and Port Hardy.
Staffing was also an issue, noted Mr. Corrigan. Transport Canada forces BC Ferries to carry abnormally large amounts of crew. While a 2000-passenger Washington State Ferry can take to the sea with only 14 crewmembers, a similar-sized B.C. Ferry will carry 48 staff.
All told, wrote the CEO, BC Ferries actually beats Washington on the measurement of “passenger miles.” Where it takes Washington $1.32 to haul a passenger for one mile, B.C. can do it for $1.26.
Still, no British Columbian will deny that their ferry monopoly has a pretty severe spending problem.
‘BC Ferries people kind of wrinkle their nose and talk about Washington State being a bunch of rust buckets — and they’re right, but [Washington] gets the job done’
Mr. Corrigan, for instance, took home $563,000 in 2013. The wage is far less than the $1-million paid to his predecessor, David Hahn — but nearly quadruple the $152,000 paid to the head of Washington State Ferries.
Last year, Claire Travena, B.C.’s shadow minister of transport, took a fact-finding trip to Washington State to figure out just how B.C.’s American neighbour pulled off such an affordable ferry system.
Her prime takeaway, she said, was the “cultural” difference between Washington State and British Columbia. While the Americans were soberly devoted exclusively to moving Washingtonians across water, BC Ferries had a weakness for flair.
Puget Sound buzzes with bare-bones car ferries built in the 1970s, but BC Ferries has a fleet of gargantuan vessels replete with stainless steel décor, flatscreen televisions, luxury gift shops and gourmet cafeterias.
In the summer, the ferry corporation even hires “Coastal Naturalists” to stand on the outside decks offering free lectures about local fauna.
And where many Washington terminals are little more than parking lots with boat ramps, B.C.’s coast is dotted with multimillion terminal facilities replete with state-of-the-art bathrooms, floor-to-ceiling windows and public art.
“We have very rich ferries, there’s no question about it,” said Ms. Travena, a Quadra Island resident and frequent ferry commuter. “You just need a service that will get you from A to B, safely and efficiently. You don’t need all the frills.”
AP Photo/Elaine ThompsonThe relatively austere Washington State ferries beat BC Ferries on virtually every possible indicator, according to a 2010 report.
Capt. George Capacci is the Number Two for Washington State Ferries. A BC Ferries alumnus, he noted that Washington has a much easier task at running cost-effective ferries — but acknowledged that the state runs a significantly pared-down operation.
“I wouldn’t say that Washington State ferries are austere, but they’re more austere than BC Ferries,” said Capt. Capacci.
BC Ferries was once a Crown Corporation, but in 2003 it was legislated into a sort of semi-private limbo: It considers itself a private company, but receives a $150 million-a-year subsidy and counts the Province of B.C. as its only shareholder.
Ever since, the company has been hell bent on transforming what was once a fleet of “highway boats” into a tourist attraction.
“It’s more exciting to run a cruise line than a transportation company, and they’ve gone all-in on this philosophy,” said Jordan Bateman, B.C. director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “BC Ferries people kind of wrinkle their nose and talk about Washington State being a bunch of rust buckets — and they’re right, but [Washington] gets the job done.”
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BC Ferries has spent more than $500,000 per year buying prime advertising space at Vancouver Canucks games.
Amanda Bates, a partner with the Vancouver-based marketing firm Curve Communications, said this is a strange PR strategy for an essential service with no direct competitors.
As she told the National Post in an email, they should “know that their spending money on advertising—expensive advertising at that—would absolutely open them up to direct criticism from their target audience.”
On the first floor of Vancouver’s Fairmont Pacific Rim—in what is one of the priciest pieces of real estate in all of Canada—stands the “BC Ferries Vacation Centre,” a 2,500 square foot showroom selling $350 overnight trips to Victoria and $1,000-per-person “adventures” to Haida Gwaii.
The problem is, there are not a lot of tourists on BC Ferries — particularly when the price keeps going up.
Tristin Hopper/National PostThe BC Ferries Vacation Centre in Downtown Vancouver occupies one of the choicest retail spots in the entire city.
As per a 2010 Tourism Victoria survey, even at the height of tourism season the number of tourists aboard the Vancouver-Victoria ferry never exceeds 50%.
“And it’s in decline,” said Brock Smith, the University of Victoria economist who prepared the survey.
Even with a professor’s salary, Mr. Smith says the $250 roundtrip fare has already caused him to cancel the family’s annual Easter trip to Vancouver, and he suspects he is not alone.
As an economist, Mr. Smith finds the whole case study of BC Ferries a bit a nightmare. As it hemorrhages riders to high prices, the company’s counterintuitive response has been to jack up prices even higher.
Even on board, company policy defies the basic laws of microeconomics. Smart Cars are charged the same fare as a Ford F-350. RVs, meanwhile, pay 2.5 times the cost of a car — despite being nowhere near the length of two vehicles.
This would not fly in Washington State for the simple reason that there are alternatives. Almost every one of Washington’s ferries serves a community that is also accessible by road: If drivers get fed with the Seattle to Bremerton ferry, they can simply skip it with an end-run drive through Tacoma.
BC Ferries, of course, will never have that problem.
“There’s no choice,” said Mr. Smith. “It’s not like I can wait an hour and get on the cheap ferry.”
National Post
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