Courtesy of skadhu at microfishing in the world pool (CC by NC 4.0 licence)
Month: November 2014
Food for thought
There are a couple of good recent articles that you should really read. First, Dave Neads has written an excellent analyis on the Bridge-Free Salish Sea website. “The Big Picture” looks at the history of the BC Ferries management model, how it’s working out, and implications for the future, particularly with regard to bridges. And secondly, another demonstration that implementing ferry cuts without…
Lost in translation?
The Gabriola FAC helpfully collected a number of quotes from Transportation Minister Todd Stone’s media conference about that report on proposed economic efficiencies for BC Ferries. It’s astonishing how ambiguous what he said actually is; it’s almost like he was being purposefully vague. You can interpret these statements in so many ways! So we couldn’t resist annotating with our own…
Island Life, Pre-industrial Style
And what did you do for Power Outage Day? Me, I plugged in the gennie because work, admired all the sunshine, and (later) whined about Village Foods pulling all the fresh greens. I suppose if we’d had a bridge we could’ve all driven over to the big island and… whined about them pulling the fresh greens too, seeing as their…
Connecting the dots
Well, I’ve been reading through that new BC Ferries report—the one that proposes ways for BCF to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. There are four proposed strategies: Replace existing ferries with 3 new ones and convert Spirit Class ferries to LNG for savings in fuel costs (in process already) Business transformation strategies enabled by technology Make changes to the Major…
CBC interview with Claire Trevena about BC Ferries
Go here to listen. Gregor Craigie interviews NDP Ferries critic Claire Trevena about the floated Horseshoe Bay<>Nanaimo route. Claire points out that this route is Highway 1, and such a change is effectively decommissioning a large portion of it. By a semi-private body.
BC Ferries considers changes to service
From a CBC News article: “A report by BC Ferries for efficiencies has raised questions about running ferry service between Horseshoe Bay and Nanaimo, suggesting that the route may become a passenger-only service or be re-routed entirely through Tsawwassen.” We mentioned in our Why No Bridge section that it was likely that the provincial government was considering this—evidently that consideration is serious. We will…
BFSS call for volunteers
“Bridge-Free Salish Sea needs volunteers! Currently, we’re asking for people to collect signatures for our petition; could you take a shift or two? Soon we’ll be asking for people to take part in our letter-writing campaign and our other strategies. If you love our bridge-free island and you want to help, please contact us at bridgefreesalishsea@telus.net. Together, we can defend our…
BFSS: letter to Todd Stone
From Steve O’Neill’s letter to Todd Stone: “I am requesting that you withdraw the funds for this study and instead navigate your Ministry towards re-establishing BC Ferries as a Crown Corporation and funded similarly to other transportation systems within the province.” Read the whole thing at the Bridge-Free Salish Sea site.