Editor:
I’m replying to the “Insight into the ferry survey” Thanks for the letter, Mr. Brian Anderson of BC Ferries. How nice to hear of the $190 million in upgrades to Powell River, Blubber Bay and Little River terminals. Plus, all brand new vessels for those routes as well as an additional $27.8 million annually for funding. Umm...so what have you spent on the lower Sunshine Coast? The overhead pedestrian walkway/loading project just vanished. New vessels?...well...
I hear via the Times Colonist that BC Ferries has issued a call for shipyards to build seven new ferries to replace our ol’ Queen of Surrey and other C class vessels. They are proposing these new vessels to enter service in 2029. Boy, I hope we/she can hang in there ‘til then! Anyway, these proposed new ferries will be much bigger, similar to the 550’ Spirit class ferries.
Our Queen of Surrey is just under 460’, so I am guessing our wish/need for hourly sailings with slightly smaller ferries is out the window for the foreseeable future unless they will be putting two of these behemoths on our route. In keeping with this mentality, I’m surprised they don’t build a 1,000’ ferry and have just two sailings a day...and build even bigger parking lots so we can wait all day for the boat! This is similar to the Martin Mars water bomber issue. There are many fans of this iconic plane, but it is more efficient to have multiple smaller aircraft to keep a more or less continuous stream of water to fight forest fires. So, I would think the same strategy applies to having multiple smaller vessels to keep a steady flow of sailings.
That’s my two cents.
Brian Klassen
Halfmoon Bay
