BC Ferries says it’s going ahead with the next steps in procuring five new major vessels needed on its busiest routes between Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland.
The company says the new vessels will help it to address projected population growth, replace aging vessels, and meet customer expectations.
CEO Nicolas Jimenez tells 1130 NewsRadio that the Ferry Commissioner still has to approve the designs, but they’re hoping to get the first of the five new vessels in the water by 2029 — with all of them operating by 2031.
“What we would see is essentially a ship deployed about every six months. It takes a bit of time to bring a new ship into service. So it’s not like five show up day 1, and day 2 you take out five or four old ships. You need time to absorb that into your system,” Jimenez explained.
For now, the company says, it’s going to work on maintenance to extend the operational life of two current vessels — the Queen of Surrey and the Queen of Oak Bay.
The C-class vessels serve routes between Vancouver Island and the mainland, and BC Ferries has said its current fleet is aging.
Last week, BC Ferries had to pull its ship, the Queen of New Westminster, out of service for six months after a propeller fell off the vessel into the sea.
The company says the new fleet will help meet the record-breaking demand it saw this summer, with over 8,040,000 passengers and over 3,150,000 vehicles transported between June 1 and Aug. 31.
“[We’re] one of the few transportation services, I think, in North America that have surpassed our pre-COVID high. So definitely we’re feeling the pressures and we’re going to continue to be there,” said Jimenez.
Ed Hooper, the company’s executive director of shipbuilding says the five new ferries will be more environmentally friendly than its older ships.
“These new vessels will be quieter and cleaner than the vessels they replace, allowing us to achieve a significant reduction in our corporate greenhouse gas emissions,” said Hooper.
BC Ferries says it needs seven new vessels in total, but will look at adding in the remaining two ships later on.