BC Ferries

[Bubalouie]

http://www.castanet.net/edition/news-st ... htm#108317

Maybe if the head honcho took a decrease in pay and they lowered the fares, more people would use them........we used to do an Island trip twice a year........can't afford to anymore.

[hobbyguy]

The problem with BC Ferries is twofold.

I agree that it has become something of a cash cow for top managers. That is, however, a distraction from the core problem.

The services were expanded beyond all reason for purposes of political expediency. Just look at the Ferry services provided to the puny population of Mayne Island. Ridiculously high. The recent ferry grounding there had a crew on board of 22, and 2, yup, TWO passengers. Millions and millions wasted.

[Rwede]

http://www.castanet.net/edition/news-story-108317-3-.htm#108317

Maybe if the head honcho took a decrease in pay and they lowered the fares, more people would use them........we used to do an Island trip twice a year........can't afford to anymore.

Okay, let's pay him $0.00 per year, just for fun.

$500,730/19,000,000 passengers = 2.6¢ per passenger.

Yep, that'll fix everything when each passenger saves 2.6¢ on their ferry ride.

BTW, Mike Corrigan's wage was cut from $915,000 in 2012 to $500,730 in 2014, with wage freezes until 2016 and no bonuses. Maybe we should cut your wage by almost 50% so your employer's customers can save 2.6¢ each, too?

[Dizzy1]

We don't go to the Island anymore, too expensive. We wanted to do a trip up to Prince Rupert and then take the boat back ... ended up going to the UK for a week instead ... 'twas cheaper.

[MAPearce]

Build it and they will come.....

BCFerries is looking at this the wrong way IMO. They should make it more affordable for people to use so we'll use it more often..

Chopping services to the core while hiking fares to the moon just . won't . work .

AND someone needs to slap their union around a bit . They're part responsible for the waste.

[Bubalouie]

Agree with you MA, if the rates were affordable, we'd use the service way more often...

[maple leaf]

BC ferry rates are going up

Stephen Hume: BC Ferries: bloated, inefficient and a recessionary drag on the province

B.C.’s quasi-privatized ferry company spends about $12 on management and administrative overhead for every $1 spent on such costs by Washington State Ferries

BY STEPHEN HUME, VANCOUVER SUN FEBRUARY 18, 2014 11:07 AM

Stephen Hume: BC Ferries: bloated, inefficient and a recessionary drag on the province

-The second of BC Ferries three Super-C class vessel, the Coastal Inspiration, makes it’s way through the Juan de Fuca Strait on the way to Naniamo in Victoria, BC on Tuesday, March 25, 2008.
Photograph by: Victoria Times Colonist , VTC VTC
A central argument for privatizing British Columbia’s ferry system was that a strict business model would prove far more efficient than continuing the system under provincial control.

Instead, the privatized model has yielded bloated management, lack of transparency, increasingly inefficient service and rapidly rising costs that now threaten perhaps $500 million in annual provincial tax revenue and place a recessionary drag on perhaps $50 billion in provincial economic productivity.

Thirty years ago, when Premier Bill Bennett’s Social Credit government ran the operation, BC Ferries serviced 23 routes with 3,800 employees and a management/administration unit of 120.

Today, it services two additional routes, but has added about 1,000 employees and has a management/administration unit of more than 600, including — based on 2011 reports — 12 vice-presidents.

This works out to one manager for every 7.6 employees. Even if you remove several hundred excluded ship’s officers from the equation, it still works out to about one manager for every 10 employees.

By comparison, Washington State Ferries, which operates under the state highways and transportation system and carries more passengers and vehicles (although with fewer vessels on generally shorter routes than in B.C.), runs efficiently with 43 managers — about one manager for every 40 workers.

BC Ferries spends about $12 on management and administrative overhead for every $1 spent on those costs by Washington State Ferries.

Compensation for just the chief executive officer and vice-presidents at BC Ferries in 2011 was $200,000 more than the spending by the Washington State Ferries system on management and administration.

In rationalizing bonuses and other perks for top BC Ferries executives, the ferry corporation’s board of directors announced last year that the incoming CEO’s annual compensation would be set at $500,730 for 2014, down markedly from the $915,000 paid in 2012.

Compare that reduced salary to the compensation Washington State Ferries pays its top executive — $152,000 a year with no bonuses because running the system efficiently, providing adequate service and achieving results is deemed the job description. BC Ferries pays its recently retired CEO a pension equal to twice the salary of the top Washington ferries executive.

At the Alaska Marine Highways System, which operates ferries serving far flung island and remote coastal communities in the Alaska Panhandle and the Aleutian archipelago — its southernmost terminal is in Bellingham, Wash. — the top executive earns earned $131,000 last year.

BC Ferries’ comptroller earns $189,000 a year, about $50,000 a year more than the comptroller-general of the entire B.C. government, who is responsible for an annual budget of about $45 billion. BC Ferries’ vice-president of information technology takes home double that paid the head of IT at the Health Ministry, which, as the Victoria Times Colonist noted in an editorial last year, has a budget 25 times bigger than the ferry corporation.

It’s easy, looking at these numbers, to see why so many Vancouver Sun readers perceive that the government appears to have lost sight of the mission — creating and sustaining infrastructure that’s installed to grow B.C.’s economic prosperity, not restrict it.

And remember, if government policy creates recessionary drag upon 20 per cent of the province’s economy, it’s not just a regional issue. It must inevitably hurt every household and business in British Columbia, including the Lower Mainland, for which ferry terminals at Tsawwassen and Horseshoe Bay are portals to a market equivalent to almost half the population of Metro Vancouver.

Among the most trenchant observations from readers is this one: If Transportation Minister Todd Stone were to order his government to apply BC Ferries’ pricing and cost-recovery strategy to the new Port Mann Bridge, it would respond to falling commuter use by jacking up the toll for cars from $3 to $6.50, shutting one lane, and closing the bridge entirely during the morning and evening commutes.

This proposition seems absurd, but it’s precisely the model being applied to the ferry system.

[email protected]

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun


Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/St ... z2thyvKnz7

[Rwede]

^^^ Exactly why the ferry system should be completely privatized with no influence from government.

Then you'd see efficiencies come into play and staffing set at reasonable levels.

As long as the taxpayers' teat is dangled in front of them, both the bureaucrats and unions will suckle greedily at it.

[Hassel99]

That article provides some very scary prospective. Time to gut the system?

[Smurf]

Looks more like a properly run government system, Bill Bennett's operation, Washington State Ferries or Alaskan Marine Highway system might be the way to go. Obviously NOT this government like many other things, Hydro, GST, ICBC, BCTF, etc. that they have tried to meddle in. The common denominator here is not unions or public corporations, it is this Liberal government.

[maryjane48]

^^^ Exactly why the ferry system should be completely privatized with no influence from government.

Then you'd see efficiencies come into play and staffing set at reasonable levels.

As long as the taxpayers' teat is dangled in front of them, both the bureaucrats and unions will suckle greedily at it.

dnt forget more sinking

[Smurf]

There is another way to look at this. We have four examples, only one has private involvement, even Bill Bennett had no private involvement. Surprise, surprise, the one with private involvement is the one that has problems. Even if, as was earlier stated the private side also likes the public teat, it just shows that they are the problem, no matter where the money comes from. We need a government ready to actually do some work instead of running around the province discussing and doing photo ops. Time to earn their salary.

[maple leaf]

BC ferries has been in the private sector all be a quasi- private company since 2003 and has been going down hill ever since.Time to bring it back into the government under the Ministries of highways.The private experiment didn't work and won't work.I can't see any private company wanting to take it over and be able to run it for a profit and still be an affordable service to BC.

[Smurf]

We also have another project where this government went to private enterprise. BC Hydro and run of the river projects that are costing us 100's of millions of dollars for years to come and a lot of it to pay for Hydro we don't even want or need. Hopefully they have learned their lesson as I don't believe we can afford anymore. Get back control of BC Ferries and start to run it properly. Same old story, time to go to the office and do some work.

[bob vernon]

Besides the ferries and BC Hydro, which have been privatized with the provincial government the sole stockholder (this allows the province to NOT include the losses of these corporations in the budget calculations), there is the Northwest Transmission Line. Most British Columbians haven't heard of it. It runs from near Terrace, northward to a place called Bob Quinn. The province blew $763 million on this project last year and there will be a lot more this coming summer. It's being built by Hydro to supply some mines up there with cheap hydro. Gee, do ya think maybe that all this borrowing by BC Hydro is the reason your electrical bills are going up so much in the next few years?

The budget: it's no more balanced than Christy is.