BC Ferries gears up for last long weekend of summer amid challenging season

Labour Day marks the final long weekend of the summer season, and with many people across B.C. expected to take advantage with travel, BC Ferries is trying to get ahead of any potential issues.

The company held an update Thursday, ahead of the long weekend, saying it will continue to rely on changes made earlier this summer to help keep people moving.

“With additional capacity in our data centers, a virtual waiting room to accommodate an unlikely surge of demand on the website and booking applications, and additional monitoring throughout the weekend — human and automated,” explained BC Ferries CEO Nicolas Jimenez.

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He says additional call centre teams will also be on standby “in the event that something happens” to help support passengers.

“So we’re ready to go. We’re hoping British Columbians have heeded the message, which is, if you don’t have a reservation, we’re encouraging people to find alternate ways to get on board. Take transit, carpool, get dropped off and walk on. Essentially, if you don’t have a reservation, you will find it a very challenging experience,” he said.

“But if you have a reservation, you’re going to get where you need to go and you’re going to have a great weekend.”

BC Ferries says sailing changes will be coming into effect after the September long weekend, as the summer season winds down.

“During the peak summer season, all of our vessels are deployed through the network. You’ve heard that, you know that there’s nothing sitting around. Everything is deployed,” said Vice President of Strategy and Community Engagement Brian Anderson.

“Now, following Labor Day, we get into a bit of a complicated ballet involving most of our vessels. Many of our smaller vessels and all of our large vessels need to be removed from service for a period of time to undergo regulatory safety inspections and planned maintenance work. For our large vessels serving the routes between Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast, and the Lower Mainland, this out-of-service period ranges somewhere between three weeks to eight weeks or more, depending on where the vessels are in their lifecycle and the amount of work that needs to be performed.”

This maintenance work needs to be done over the course of nine months, Anderson says, so they are available for next year’s busy season.

BC Ferries tweaks Labour Day-Thanksgiving schedule

What this means is BC Ferries will be tweaking its schedule to ensure core sailings are still provided under the Coastal Ferry Services contract with the B.C. government.

Anderson says this, plus the continued transportation of essential goods and services, are top priorities for the ferry company, with the remaining capacity directed to vehicle traffic.

He says repairs to the Coastal Renaissance mean the Queen of Alberni is currently sailing in its place on the Tsawwassen-Duke Point route. Because of this change, he says additional trips during peak travel times between the Labour Day and Thanksgiving long weekends will not be possible.

“Those 60 extra trips will be cancelled and this will impact approximately 800 customers who currently have bookings on those sailings on those routes at those times. It will also, of course, impact drive-up traffic that had planned to travel on those sailings but had not yet made bookings,” Anderson explained, adding those with reservations who are affected will be contacted by the company.

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“I recognize that this change is very frustrating for customers. We do not have spare vessels available. We’ve exhausted all possibilities to eliminate the impact of having one of our largest vessels out of service, and we’ve worked to devise a solution that impacts the fewest customers possible.

“I understand from our team that we have sufficient capacity to offer alternative spots for all 800 customers who have bookings on those impacted sailings and are providing as much advance notice as possible to customers who have not yet made travel plans so that they can plan accordingly,” he continued.

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