People heading to and from the Sunshine Coast on Monday could see delays or cancellations after a familiar problem resurfaced this weekend at BC Ferries’ Langdale Terminal.
Berth 1 suffered a mechanical issue on Sunday afternoon, restricting vehicle traffic to the main car deck of vessels.
The same issue happened on May 16, which caused a major backlog on the route to and from Horseshoe Bay and left people behind.
It also forced drivers already on board the Queen of Surrey to back off on the Vancouver side on Sunday night.
In a statement on Monday, BC Ferries said that staff are currently loading vehicles using the main deck only.
“While that reduces vehicle capacity on each sailing, service is continuing to operate and we were able to accommodate all customers with reservations by moving some bookings to the next available sailing,” a spokesperson said.
“We have not had to cancel any reservations to date.”
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BC Ferries also advised customers to check sailings later in the day as there might be space available.
Eric McNeely, provincial president of the BC Ferry & Marine Workers’ Union, said this infrastructure failure reinforces the challenge that BC Ferries has, which is deferring investment.
“So if we look back a couple years ago, BC Ferries did an assessment of their terminals and there’s 30 to 50 per cent of the terminals were in a state of needing significant repair, so in poor condition or needing significant repair,” he said.
“Langdale has, especially the upper ramp in Langdale … had challenges for basically its entire duration and what we’re seeing certainly through Sunday and going into this week looks to be more of that, where folks on the Sunshine Coast who already had one of the busiest routes in the summertime now have less capacity due to less access for that upper car deck, and I think that’s going to lead to some real challenges.”
McNeely said the dissolving of the ferry advisory committees means people living there have less of an outlet to highlight any concerns they have, whether that’s infrastructure, sailing frequency or vessel delays.
He added that the issue in Langdale is leading to frustration in Powell River as people tried to travel from that terminal, leading to backlog and delays for passengers.
McNeely said crews on board the vessels are trying to do what they can to get as many people across.
“But even as late as last night, there was crews that the vessel had to stay in Horseshoe Bay, and that meant that crews were taking water taxis back and forth, which is not sort of the normal process and when you consider there’s people travelling from around the province to support that second vessel, I think what it says is the system isn’t running at full capacity because of deferred investment,” he said.
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