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'Unacceptable': Massive BC Ferries lineups to get to Vancouver Island for the long weekend

https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/unacceptable-massive-bc-ferries-lineups-to-get-to-vancouver-island-for-the-long-weekend-1.6464321

Long weekend travellers waited hours at Tsawwassen's terminal to get to Vancouver Island by ferry on Friday, those without a reservation waiting upwards of six hours.

17 comments

zephyreks

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When is there not?

There needs to be more competition for the route, but every company that tries has failed.

Maybe running some boats with less parking and more seating?

LineRider

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Some ebike only ferries would be cool

Pyr_Pressure

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Ebikes only, no manual bikes allowed

Vampiric_Luma

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Of course. Why would we allow those lessers upon our great vessel?

MajorMajormajormajor

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Plebs.

PenguinTD

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I wonder why we don't just dug a tunnel that connects to the island? is there budget issue or technical issue? (bridge out of picture cause we have a lot of those huge tanker traffic.)

leosin

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Some quick googling and it seems the crossing length to the island is similar to the crossing of the English Channel (40 - 50km). The Channel tunnel depth is about 115m below sea level, whereas the Straight of Georgia has an average depth of ~~150m per Wikipedia. The Channel tunnel cost about 21 billion pounds (~~$36billion CAD in 2021 dollars) to complete, so I'd imagine a tunnel to Vancouver Island would be at least the same if not more. Doesn't seem worth it for the size of the population crossing even if it were possible.

Polendri

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The Straight gets over 300m deep in proposed crossing areas, and has hundreds more metres of sediment before hitting bedrock. That depth makes for unprecedented engineering challenges for both tunnels and bridge supports; not necessarily impossible but certainly not financially feasible. A floating bridge in a place with so much wind and waves is similarly unprecented and probably a non-starter due to the shipping traffic.

The BC government has a good overview page about it. They basically suggest that the only thing that has even the slightest chance of working is a submerged floating tunnel, something which has never been attempted.

PenguinTD

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Make sense, if there is a gap like this between BC/Washington then we would have build it to cut transportation cost.

kae

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As strange as it sounds, Islanders would be up in arms over a bridge. It would drastically change the culture of Vancouver Island, and essentially turn the central island into a suburb of Vancouver.

corsicanguppy

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Fault lines .

PenguinTD

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/multimedia/every-fault-line-in-british-columbia-1.2919420

dang that's a lot on the island. guess we can't map the sea floor ones.

Grimpen

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The Seaspan barge in Duke Point moves more cargo now than BC Ferries. In fact, I think most containerized freight moves by the Seaspan barge on and off Vancouver Island.

Hullo is starting a foot passenger ferry this August, downtown Nanaimo to Downtown Vancouver. There is also Harbour Air. If you are bringing your car though, it's pretty much only BC Ferries. Technically you can take the Coho to Washington State and then drive around though.

A freight oriented bridge island hopping up past Campbell River is probably the most economically sound, and could even tie the island into the North America rail network. The Nanaimo port is somewhat limited, since offloaded cargo still has to get to the mainland. I guess if you are already retired though, you probably don't care about challenges to island industry.

corsicanguppy

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BC Ferries being down a vessel due to repairs

... with no spare or recovery plan.

Keep in mind this is the real issue: BCFC's bad execution of a nonexistent business continuity plan.

For an essential service, a real one, this kind of plan is just as essential: how up-in-arms would we have been if BCTel only worked half the time over the long weekend? We'd have pitchforks and torches and a goal to misbehave.

Bad things happen: repairs go bad, boats get damaged, etc. How they prepare for it and respond to it - or, in this case, how BCFC doesn't - says a lot about adequacy and fitness for service.

Again, BCFC is Not making the grade. And when we can't do a good job as a user-fee service, what do we do? We bring it back into MoT.