Ferry update Saturday, April 26
Elgin McKillop, from Western Pacific Marine, was on Lasqueti today, at the Community Information Meeting at the hall. He says that Centurion VII is nearly ready to come home, with just the Canadian Steamship Inspection to complete. It will be back, all going well, the first week in May, and possibly even before then, if everything works as well as hoped, or a bit better.
Thank you to all passengers (and those that chose not to be passengers in busy times) and to the crew for all the cooperation and consideration. It'll be nice to have covered outdoor space again, and less stress and crowding, except for the major peak ferry use times. For years it's been said we don't need a larger ferry, we just need smarter passengers. I understand that our usage is something between 1/4 and 1/3 of capacity, or maybe even less.
Comments
To act "smarter", passengers need better information...
If we had historical data on ferry usage patterns, we could make some predictions about "busy" ferry times - the crew (and many residents), of course, already have some intuition about this. But if we quantify it, then passengers could be smarter about how they plan their travels (when that is possible).
Also, incentives like no extra freight on "busy" sailings will help a lot to "spread the load".
In fact, and I apologize ahead to any Lasquetians I might offend with this heresy, but a slightly higher fare on "busy" sailings (not every sailing that IS busy, but rather sailings predicted to run at or near capacity) - much like the surcharge in summer - would also help to "spread the load" by creating incentives to travel on under-utilized sailings.
We seem to regularly experience stress and overloads around the ferry, yet if we are truly using only 1/4 - 1/3 of the ferry's capacity, then there is flexibility in the system we can exploit to make ferry life more relaxed for all - we only need some creative ideas for how to "spread out" a bit more.
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