BC Ferries held a consultation with some community members about alternative service during an upgrade on the Westview and Little River terminals. Members of the Northern Sunshine Coast Ferry Advisory Committee and about 25 stakeholders met with corporation representatives on Thursday, October 11.
Bill Cripps, committee chair, said no decisions have been made, but there was a lot of information and a lot of input during the meeting. “We’re a year away, which is good,” he said.
The work at Westview terminal is expected to take eight weeks, while the Little River terminal project is expected to take about four weeks.
There was a consensus among the stakeholders that the work on the two terminals should be done concurrently, not separately, Cripps said. “They should be done at the same time so there is only two months of alternative service,” he said.
While the work is taking place on Westview terminal, BC Ferries is working out the details of alternative service, as all vessels to Vancouver Island and Texada Island will have to use Saltery Bay.
The corporation is looking at Departure Bay in Nanaimo as the destination on Vancouver Island, Cripps said, as opposed to Buckley Bay, which had been mentioned in the past. That plan would last about four weeks, the time the Little River terminal upgrade will be taking place. “They had some logic around that, based on travel patterns and who is taking the ferries,” he said.
While the reasons were well thought out, Cripps said, the stakeholders provided a lot of input to BC Ferries, which it will have to take into consideration.
Darin Guenette, BC Ferries’ manager, public affairs, said the corporation is looking at flying passengers who have medical appointments in Courtenay or Campbell River to the island, as it did when the Queen of Burnaby was out of service earlier this year.
The trip to Vancouver Island is expected to take about three hours. BC Ferries did not have a proposed schedule, but it is talking about using the Island Sky for the trip. There was a lengthy discussion about the vessel, the weather and the route, said Cripps. “The worst weather is on the route to Little River. Once you get passed Texada, it’s pretty closed going down until you get into the open area south of Lasqueti. That weather at Sisters Island historically is not nearly as bad as it is up here,” he said. “There was obviously a big concern about weather, but it doesn’t matter if it’s in the fall or in the spring, there is going to be some heavy weather at some point.”
Guenette said the capacity of the Island Sky is almost identical to the Queen of Burnaby when its car ramps are not engaged. As well, it has proven to handle better in heavy weather and the Burnaby doesn’t fit into the dock at Saltery Bay.
Guenette also said the Queen of Chilliwack would replace the Island Sky on the Saltery Bay-
Earls Cove route during that time.
There was a lot of discussion about when the work would occur, either before or after Christmas, Cripps said, a conversation that involved information about weather patterns. “No decision has been made, but the most likely would be after Christmas, mid-January to mid-March 2014,” he said.
One of the considerations is around youth sports teams and people with medical appointments in Courtenay and Campbell River. “The work won’t happen this school year, it will be next school year,” Cripps said. “It will all be planned, said and done by the spring, for sure, so that people have a long time to make alternative plans.”
That works for scheduling medical appointments as well, because some people may not want to use the alternative service, Cripps pointed out.
The corporation is coming back to the stakeholder group with a more definitive proposal in about a month, Cripps said, including proposed schedules. After that, there will be public open houses in Powell River and on Texada. “This consultation that BC Ferries is undertaking is very thorough,” he said. “Everybody will get an opportunity to have their say if they want to.”
One of the problems in the community is communication about changes, Cripps said. “There will be a separate initiative to ensure that there is really good communication,” he said. “Communication is going to be vitally important on a daily and weekly basis.”
The work has to be done, Cripps pointed out, because the terminal has reached the end of its life. “It’s not going to be as good as we have now, obviously,” Cripps said. “What we really need to do between them and us is to make it the best it can be for those eight weeks.”
