BC Ferries needs new vessels in service on the Powell River-Comox and Powell River-Texada Island routes by April 1, 2016. Since it takes about three years to put new vessels into operation, the company expects to begin the process this year, said Darin Guenette, BC Ferries manager of public affairs.
However, a timeline hasn’t been established, Guenette said. “Is there a date when we’re going to look to be issuing an RFP [request for proposals] for a builder or a designer, or how does that work? I don’t have those details yet. But yes, all things considered equal, we expect to be starting something in this process this year, the initial tender process.”
BC Ferries consulted with the community on a vessel replacement strategy in 2004-2005. It sent its report to the provincial government, where it has sat ever since.
In 2010, representatives from the ministry of transportation and infrastructure met with community stakeholders about the replacement strategy. The discussion included options for replacing the vessels, including having two medium-sized ships rather than one large and one small, or having one large vessel that provides Texada service at the same time as travelling between Comox and Westview.
As in 2005, the Northern Sunshine Coast Ferry Advisory Committee supported an option that sees the ships replaced with similar-sized vessels and the transportation routes staying the same.
When the process for new vessels begins this year, Guenette said, at the minimum, the ferry advisory committee will be involved in consultations on a number of details, such as layout, seating, amenities and community bulletin boards. “There are a number of things where we do ask and we get good feedback,” he said.
Guenette also said there is no end date on Transport Canada licencing on vessels. “There’s not a pumpkin date,” he said. “We don’t turn a ship into a pumpkin if it sails beyond a certain date.”
Any deadlines affecting vessels are internal, Guenette said. “BC Ferries has a life-expectancy date of a vessel,” he said. “What we do as it’s getting nearer is a cost-benefit analysis.”
If a vessel is aging and regular maintenance has been done, the company knows what components have started to age, Guenette explained. “We start determining how much is it going to cost to continue to upgrade some components and upgrade the vessel in general,” he said. “Do you continue to extend its life beyond our own internal target date for life expectancy or where does it become more cost efficient to look at replacing it?”
Bill Cripps, chair of the ferry advisory committee, said nothing has happened or changed since September 2005. “The ferry advisory committee was extremely frustrated with this whole process,” he said.
After the meeting with ministry officials in 2010, the province committed to consulting with the community again before any final decisions, Cripps said. “That’s almost three years ago,” he said.
The Queen of Burnaby, the regular vessel on the Powell River-Comox route, is 48 years old, well beyond the expected life of a vessel, Cripps said. “One of the things you expect when vessels get old is you’re going to have unplanned failures.”
The annual operating expenses for fiscal 2012 for the Powell River-Comox route was $3.3 million more than the operating expenses for 2011, Cripps pointed out. Some of those expenses would have been related to the Burnaby’s refit in 2011, some to emergency maintenance after the vessel broke down in February 2012, just after the refit, and some for the alternative service BC Ferries provided during the two weeks the ship was being repaired, he added. “Those are the kinds of things that happen because of the province’s delay in replacing the vessel,” he said. “You have emergency failures, which really negatively impact service and negatively impact operating expenses. We can, at the very minimum, look forward to another three years, best case, of those kinds of events taking place, because now the Burnaby is one year older and its whole infrastructure is that age. So the expectation is you’ll have more failures and more service-related issues.”
