Quote:
Originally Posted by Vantage
The ferry terminal is not really the ridership draw many people seem to think it is. Each ferry only has a capacity of 1500 people max (many of those using personal vehicles) and the ferries only come every hour during peak season. The Tsawwassen terminal express bus is perfectly serviceable and actually has significantly higher average speed than the Canada Line.
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The fact that the ferry terminal does not look like a huge transit draw today is rather obvious. A large share of the people who would otherwise be walk-on passengers are sitting in cars, paying to bring the car, because the non-car trip is awkward: SkyTrain, transfer, express bus, ferry, then another bus at the other end. Add on luggage, kids, bikes, or travel bags and the bus being fast enough becomes somewhat moot. The research has similar findings when they look at peoples preference for travelling to an airport (2% for bus vs 25% for rail,
Colovic et al. 2022).
Consider the fare structure. On the main Victoria route, the adult passenger fare is about $20, while taking a standard vehicle is about $90 before even counting the passenger fare. So a car-and-driver trip is roughly
five times the price of a walk-on passenger trip. Even with 3 adults, the price with a car per person is $50, 2.5x greater than if they didn't go by car. That price difference should be, and to a large part is, pushing people toward walk-on tickets. Walk-on passengers have indeed risen significantly over the past 10 years. But even then, the scarcity of space for vehicles is very evident. Nowadays 70–90% of vehicle deck space is bookable and people are needing to book further and further ahead to secure a vehicle spot. The access experience is wider than just the experience of the express bus, and that experience is bad enough that many people are still paying a major premium to avoid it.
People prefer rail based solutions when long-distance travel is involved and better rail-based access could shift people out of cars before they ever reach the terminal. That means fewer cars competing for deck space, more people moved per sailing, lower pressure for expensive vehicle capacity, better access for people who cannot or do not want to drive, and more realistic possibilities for passenger-focused service patterns (imagine having passenger-only or smaller-vessel services interspersed with vehicular vessels). This is also not to mention the other various economic benefits with reduced pollution, time savings, improved reliability and expanded accessibility.
Anyways, citing suppressed numbers as proof that better access is unnecessary is circular logic and ignores the fact that BC Ferries is under significant strain. Providing more car based ferry service might just be, equally, a huge waste of money.
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