BC Ferries expects another busy long weekend; passengers advised to book ahead

BC Ferries says it is expecting another busy long weekend and says passengers should plan accordingly.

Perhaps signaling the hectic weekend ahead, BC Ferries sailings already started filling up Thursday evening. As of 7 p.m, the 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. sailings on the Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay route were already full, and the 11 p.m. was half full. Looking forward to Friday, the 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. sailings Friday were 90 per cent full by Thursday evening.

Spokesperson Ritinder Matthew says Thanksgiving is the service’s fifth-busiest weekend of the year.

“We’re expecting really heavy traffic,” Matthew said.

“Last year, we saw 165,000 vehicles and 430,000 passengers traveling throughout the system [over Thanksgiving long weekend], and we’re expecting similar volumes this year.”

Matthew advises making reservations as far in advance as possible.

She also suggests people consider taking public transit to the terminals and reminds passengers that parking lots also see high volumes on long weekends, potentially making travel more difficult.

“We issued a joint release with BC Transit and TransLink earlier this week, just to remind people of how you can get to terminals really quickly and what the best route would be, depending on where you’re leaving from,” she said.

“And so we’re encouraging people to consider public transit, to consider getting dropped off so they can be walk-on passengers, and that way there’s no disruptions to their travel journey.”

This year, she says, the system is under even more pressure than usual because the 60-year-old Queen of New Westminster — one of BC Ferries’ busiest vessels, servicing the Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay route — is out for repairs until at least spring.

“That’s really impacting capacity, and we’ve added sailings where we can so there are early morning and late night sailings that we’ve added to the schedule,” she said.

Matthew says that highlights how badly BC Ferries needs a new vessel. It recently announced it was submitting proposals for a new fleet to the Ferry Commissioner for approval, but it will take a few years before the new ships hit the water.

With files from Srushti Gangdev.

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