Bowen Island gets two commuter ferry services
James Weldon, North Shore News
Published: Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Ambleside may soon be getting its own ferry connection to Downtown Vancouver if a company starting up a new service on Bowen Island gets its way.
Coastal Link Ferries, which started delivering foot passengers directly from Bowen Island to Coal Harbour Oct. 29, plans to expand its service to include a stop in West Vancouver en route some time next year. The change would mean Ambleside commuters could get from the North Shore to the city centre in just about 10 minutes.
"It's essentially a bus on the water," said Peter Green, marketing and communications director for Coastal Link. "Those who've done test runs with us have learned it's a beautiful trip (and) it's very quick."
COASTAL Link's boat holds 65 passengers and will initially run one round-trip a day.
The company is one of two to appear almost simultaneously last week offering new connections from Bowen to the city. Just 24 hours after Coastal Link's Oct. 28 announcement, another service called Granville Island Water Taxi made public its intention to do the same thing to a slightly different destination, running passengers from Bowen to Granville Island and back beginning Nov. 1.
Both enterprises are looking to cash in on the perceived frustration with transit service among Bowen Island's 3,500 residents.
As it stands, islanders must travel by B.C. Ferry to Horseshoe Bay, then either drive or bus through West Vancouver and over the Lions Gate Bridge to downtown, a journey that can take as much as two hours.
B.C. Ferries foot passengers pay about $10 for a round trip, and vehicle passengers up to $30 on top of that. They must also keep their travel to within a relatively restricted timeframe, as the vehicle ferry only runs from about 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The two new businesses hope to benefit from those limitations.
"There's just a big need from a commuter foot passenger point of view," said Kelli Turner, owner of Granville Island Water Taxi. "Residents are getting frustrated with the late ferries and inconsistencies."
How the businesses managed to choose virtually the same start date was unclear, but Green suggested they were both natural outgrowths of demographic change. The problems with commuting from Bowen have always been there, he said, but population growth on the island has only now made it viable for a private ferry service to step in. It has also been boosted by rising gas prices, which have made it less appealing to drive, added Green.
While the two companies will be covering similar routes, the services will differ in several ways. As one goes to Coal Harbour and the other Granville Island, they will be targeting opposite sides of the downtown core. Coastal Link's boats will hold 65 passengers and run once in the morning to Vancouver and once in the evening back to Bowen (although it plans to expand to up to eight round trips daily). Its competitor takes just 12 passengers, but offers runs almost hourly between 6:30 a.m. and 11:30 p.m.
Both will take about half an hour to cross (rising to 45 minutes for Coastal Link if and when it adds a stop in Ambleside). Tickets from the island to the city and back will be in the $20 to $25 range, depending on the number bought.
The passenger only ferry service (Coastal Link), which is now serving Bowen Island, was created for servicing commuter traffic between the Sunshine Coast and downtown Vancouver. By "created" I mean even the boat the operator is now using was custom made for the sole purpose of bypassing/competing with BC Ferries by offering an alternate passenger only service to the residents of the Sunshine Coast. The ferry was supposed to run several times a day leaving from the Government Dock in Gibsons (located slightly downhill from Molly's Reach) to/from the Sails/Canada Place in downtown Vancouver ... problem was/is the useless politicians here in Gibsons didn't have the foresight to cut a good moorage deal, and tax incentives, with the ferry operator so he basically said "screw off" to the Sunshine Coast and relocated his service to Bowen Island ...
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