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Fast Ferries Fiasco
By
Bob Orrick
The ghost of NDP past mismanagement in British Columbia reared its ugly head earlier this week when the current Liberal administration of Premier Gordon Campbell saw the socialists' failed four hundred fifty-four million dollar fast ferries experiment go on the auction block and realise fewer than twenty million dollars.
It was during the NDP's decade of incompetence that then premier, Glen Clark, dreamed up the idea that the Strait of Georgia ferry crossing time could be cut by about one-half hour if faster ferries were used. Normally the crossing takes one hour thirty-five minutes from Horseshoe Bay north of West Vancouver to Departure Bay in Nanaimo. Clark's idea was to build large catamarans that would carry both vehicles and passengers. The three ferries are identical at one hundred twenty-two meters in length and are built of aluminium. An American-owned BC shipyard built them. According to the NDP, the three ferries would be built for two hundred ten million dollars. Glen Clark boasted that the ferries would come in on budget "even down to the toilet paper." All British Columbia knows that was a figment of the then-premier's imagination; the final tally was the aforementioned four hundred fifty-four million dollars. To that nearly half-billion bucks must be added the cost to maintain the vessels after they were pulled from service. Moorage was ten millions dollars and eight hundred thousand dollars went to PriceWaterHouseCoopers to sell them. The Richmond-based Ritchie Bros. conducted the actual auction. The company is known world-wide but this was its first go at auctioning off failed ferries. All in all, the taxpayers of British Columbia took a huge hit on Glen Clark's dream of building and operating 'FastCats,' the handle tagged to them because of the large, crouching puma that was painted on the ships' sides. That puma failed to pounce but left its footprints firmly planted in the minds of British Columbians who turfed the incompetent socialists in favour of the Liberals. Interestingly, of the nearly twenty million dollars garnered by the auction of the ferries, not all of it will see its way into the provincial coffers; the auction house will take its cut, at the moment an unknown amount. And who was the successful bidder; why no other than the American who built the ships in the first place.
The ferries were plagued with difficulties from the beginning: mechanical problems, if the ships sailed at their designed speed the wash set up caused havoc to the shoreline of Horseshoe Bay [and raised a ruckus from property owners whose properties lined the picturesque bay], operating cost was twenty-five per cent higher than the conventional ferries, the catamarans could not carry as many trucks and buses as conventional ferries, and they were uncomfortable. Passengers sat on hard seats that reminded one of early McDonald's Restaurant seating.
It became clear soon on that Glen Clark and his troupe in their zeal to do something of lasting value and cut the crossing time by one-third, failed to realise that a ship designed to cruise at high speed cannot begin at that speed and needs to slow down prior to berthing at its destination. In the end, the crossing time was reduced by a mere ten or so minutes; hardly worth the four hundred fifty-four million dollars. The 'FastCats' were a socialist experience that many, perhaps most, British Columbians wish had never seen the light of day.
Ironically, Glen Clark announced the fast ferry fiasco on April Fool's Day seven years ago.
Bob Orrick is a private tutor of English grammar, literature, poetry and Canadian history to off-shore youngsters. His pupils hail from such places as Taiwan, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea and Venezuela. He was previously in international marketing, was a ministerial assistant to a provincial cabinet minister, spent a few years as a reporter then editor of a community newspaper and enjoyed a career in the Royal Canadian Navy.
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