British Columbia鈥檚 New Democrats promise to freeze ferry fares and halt planned cuts in routes, but it鈥檚 not a solution to the corporation鈥檚 woes. On Wednesday, the NDP announced it would give sa国际传媒 Ferries $40 million so ticket increases planned for 2014 and 2015 can be scrapped.
The $26 million in service cuts planned by the sa国际传媒 Liberals would also be shelved. Meanwhile, an NDP government would audit the corporation to examine its debt, maintenance costs, executive salaries and management structure.
The NDP鈥檚 plan is certainly more immediate and concrete than the sa国际传媒 Liberals鈥�, which promises to use one-third of future liquefied natural-gas revenues to retire sa国际传媒 Ferries鈥� debt, saving $72 million a year in debt-servicing costs. It鈥檚 hard to plan using hypothetical revenue.
However, subsidizing ferry fares for two years won鈥檛 fix the corporation鈥檚 problems of rising costs and falling ridership. Since 2004, fuel costs have risen from $50 million to $121 million, and labour costs from $202 million to $257 million. Last year, passenger traffic fell 3.5 per cent.
Maurine Karagianis, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt-Royal Roads, said: 鈥淲e want to re-establish sa国际传媒 Ferries as an integral part of our transportation system.鈥�
Islanders desperate for more government subsidies to keep fares down could read that as meaning the party sees the ferries as part of the provincial highways system. The Liberals certainly don鈥檛 see it that way. But they do see the mainland鈥檚 many routes as part of that system.
Islanders could live with the user-pay concept more easily if they knew that both the user fees and the government subsidies for major transportation routes were spread around with something approaching fairness.
The province is spending more than $25 million to build a new ferry for Upper Arrow Lake that will carry cars and passengers for free. Tolls on the Coquihalla Highway were removed when the construction costs had been covered; ongoing repair and maintenance are covered by taxpayers.
The government has spent billions in the Lower Mainland on highways, bridges and SkyTrain lines. Mainlanders do kick in a share of costs through the tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges.
If it forms the next government, the NDP will have to tackle that inequity and the question of how ferries should be funded. A temporary freeze on fares might be a crowd-pleaser, but an audit is unlikely to find quick solutions. It will just reinforce the questions that the system faces. This is not an accounting problem; it is a problem with the overall concept, the idea of what the system should be.
If government chooses to treat the ferries as part of the highways, there is no limit to how high the subsidies could go, because costs are certainly not going down. Unless we mount masts and sails on the Coastal Inspiration, the expenditure on fuel will continue to climb.
If user-pay is the choice, and subsidies are severely limited, rising ticket prices and service cuts are unavoidable. As prices rise, more people will decide not to use the ferries, and that will force more increases.
In addition to the financial cost, it has a human cost. Grandparents will see their grandchildren less often. The Island will become more isolated, and residents of the smaller islands could be told to buy their own boats.
The NDP鈥檚 ticket freeze will only buy some time. If it is elected to power, it will have to face the question that no one has been able to answer: how to fix the ferries.
