Regarding the editorial in the Aug. 30 edition of the Saanich News on the ferry reservation system. It seemed to me that the author doesn’t use the system much or doesn’t take into account the overall purpose of the system. I will start off by saying that the ferry is not a plane or train, it is an extension of a highway system that happens to cross between the Mainland and Vancouver Island (for the purpose of this reply I will be referring to the Main route between Swartz Bay and Tsawwassen). I travel this route possibly an average of once a week but sometimes as many three times during the work week, and I would say that my chosen time of travel is only know to me about 50 per cent of the time, I may know when I will be heading out from home but rarely do I know exactly when I will be returning.
To reserve or not, that is the question, if you can guarantee that you will be there for a particular sailing then a reservation makes sense, if you are travelling for work that you can’t control the completion time or travelling from a distance then there needs to be open spots for those that show up at the terminal without a reservation, traffic is very unpredictable and you could easily miss your chosen sailing. Can you imagine traveling all day long, arrive at the terminal to find out that the sailings are all booked for that day, possibly the week because they want to operate like an airline? The other item of note is the infamous long weekend and this is likely where a lot of the complaints about the system stem from, at this point the system is working at maximum capacity and that entire multi-day period should be considered rush hour, to think BC Ferries can simply double up the boats and increase the sailings is naïve at best and shows that one does not understand the logistics of handling that many sailings in a day let alone the pressure it creates on the infrastructure in and around the terminal.
As far a reservations go on the main routes, In my opinion the only reason you can reserve some portion of the deck for vehicles is because the ships are large enough to accommodate those that simply have to be there and reserve but still leave space available for those that are not able to plan ahead, imagine if a loved one who lives across the water needs you and calls you to ask for you help for a couple of days, but you can’t get there by car because the boats have been booked for weeks! If you know in advance and really have to be there then plan ahead, just like you should for any travel, again you wouldn’t show up at the airport with your bags packed for Hawaii without a reservation and expect to board the next flight out.
In my humble opinion the system works just fine, and by this I mean you can generally make a reservation as short as one day in advance, but if you wait until the morning of then it would be foolish to assume you could make a reservation, as for the cost of the reservation it is fair and favours those that plan ahead which is the way it should be, finally to make the entire route reservation only would be a disastrous mistake.
Al Sherwood
Saanich