Quote:
Originally Posted by BCPhil
There are 2 kinds of people who live in a ferry dependent community: Those that love the quaintness of ferries above all other concerns, and those that hate the government dependence and cost (but still like ferries, or else you wouldn't live there).
Studies like this are usually to either appease or coerce the sides. You either give them lip service, and show you try and that the ferries are the really only choice and the cost is justified. Or you scare them with the threat of taking the ferries away and destroying their lifestyle. You end up pitting the community against itself, and they all decide that in the end, the way it is is the best.
But this is one of those cases where having a highway as backup to the ferries might benefit the provincial economy without taking anything away from the ferry lifestyle of the communities.
P.S. what ferries has the province removed and replaced with bridges?
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Look around the Kootenay-Columbia area. There used to be a
cable ferry below the Hugh Keeleyside dam, that was replaced with a bridge IIRC in the late 80's, and shifted traffic around (and then the the Highway 3 overpass was changed in the late 90's and all of the city's major businesses moved south of the overpass.) There were threats to outright
remove the Glade ferry on the Kootenay river. (Glade doesn't have a lot of people to begin with.)
The government instead has replaced the older ferries with newer models.
My familiarity with this that somewhere around the time the Liberals were elected, "P3'ing all the inland ferries" became a hot topic, and there was panic and outrage that several of these communities might lose their ferry entirely (like Glade which has 139 houses.)
Here's a map of all the
in-land ferries.