BC Ferries - History

History

In the late 1950s, a strike by employees of the Black Ball Line caused the Social Credit government of W.A.C. Bennett to decide that the coastal ferry service in B.C. needed to be government-owned, and so it set about creating BC Ferries. Minister of Highways Phil Gaglardi was tasked with overseeing the new Crown corporation and its rapid expansion.

BC Ferries' first route, commissioned in 1960, was between Swartz Bay, north of Sidney on Vancouver Island, and Tsawwassen, a part of the Corporation of Delta, using just two vessels. These ships were the now-retired MV Tsawwassen and the MV Sidney. The next few years saw a dramatic growth of the B.C. ferry system, as it took over operations of the Black Ball Line and other major private companies providing vehicle ferry service between Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. As the ferry system expanded and started to service other small coastal communities, BC Ferries had to build more vessels, many of them in the first five years of its operations, to keep up with the demand. Another method of satisfying increasing demand for service was BC Ferries' unique "stretch and lift" program, involving seven vessels being cut in half and extended, and five of those vessels later cut in half again and elevated, to increase their passenger and vehicle-carrying capacities. The vast majority of the vessels in the fleet were built in B.C. waters, with only two foreign purchases and one domestic purchase. In the mid 1980s, BC Ferries took over the operations of the saltwater branch of the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Highways, which ran ferry services to very small coastal communities. This action dramatically increased the size of BC Ferries' fleet and its geographical service area. The distinctive 'dogwood on green' flag that BC Ferries used between 1960 and 2003 gave the service its popular nickname "the Dogwood Fleet".

At its inception, BC Ferries was a division of the British Columbia Toll Highways and Bridges Authority, a provincial Crown corporation. Through successive reorganizations, it evolved into the British Columbia Ferry Authority, and then the British Columbia Ferry Corporation, both of which, again, were provincial Crown corporations. In 2003, the Government of British Columbia announced that BC Ferries, which had been in debt, was going to be reorganized into a private corporation, implemented through the passage of the Coastal Ferry Act (Bill 18-2003). The single voting share of BC Ferries Corporation is held by the provincial government's BC Ferry Authority, which operates under the rules of the Act.

A controversy began in July, 2004 when BC Ferries, under a new American CEO, announced that the company had disqualified all Canadian bids to build three new Coastal class ships, and only the proposals from European shipyards were being considered. The contract is estimated at $542 million for the three ships, which are each designed to carry 370 vehicles and 1600 passengers.

The argument for domestic construction of the ferries is that it would employ numerous British Columbia workers, would revitalize the sagging B.C. shipbuilding industry, and entitle the provincial government to a large portion of the cost in the form of taxes. BCFS CEO David Hahn claimed that building the ferries in Germany would "save almost $80 million and could lead to lower fares."

On September 17, 2004, BC Ferries awarded the vessel construction contract to Germany's Flensburger shipyard. The contract protects BC Ferries from any delays through a fixed price and fixed schedule contract. Coastal Renaissance entered service in March 2008, while Coastal Inspiration was delivered the same month, and entered service in June. The third ship, Coastal Celebration, has been delivered and is now in service as well.

On August 18, 2006, BC Ferries commissioned Flensburger to build a new vessel for BCF's Inside Passage route, with the contract having many of the same types of terms as that for the Coastal Class vessels. The new northern service vessel, Northern Expedition, has been delivered.

In fiscal 2011, BC Ferries reported a loss of $16.5 million due to dropping ridership, with vehicle traffic dropping 3.5 percent and passenger traffic dropping 2.8 percent. Increased fares were to blame for the drop in ridership and warnings came that there would likely be cutbacks in the service on a number of its routes in order to reduce costs.

On August 26, 2012, BC Ferries announced that it will be cutting 98 round trips on its major routes starting in the fall and winter of 2012 as part of a four-year plan to save $1 million on these routes. Service cuts will include eliminating supplementary sailings on the Swartz Bay-Tsawwassen route, 18 round trips on the Horseshoe Bay-Departure Bay route and the largest number of cuts being 48 round trips on the Duke Point-Tsawwassen route with plans to look for savings on the smaller unprofitable routes in the future.

On November 20, 2012, BC Ferry Services Inc was listed as the 90th most profitable company in BC with net income of $3,781,000 in 2011 and $3,422,000 in 2010.