B.C. Ferries apologizes after website overstates sailing waits on its busiest route

B.C. Ferries has issued an apology after its website overstated sailing waits Tuesday morning, indicating a wait time of 12 hours to get a drive-up vehicle spot on the busy Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay B.C. Ferries route.

At 6 a.m. PT, the B.C. Ferries current conditions page showed sailings on the route from Metro Vancouver to Vancouver Island were sold out until 6 p.m., with the website indicating customers without a reservation faced a nine-sailing wait.

However, Karen Johnston, B.C. Ferries's executive director of communications and engagement, said that up to 20 per cent of customers did not show up for their reservations in the morning, a development that was not properly reflected on the website.

Johnston said most customers without reservations actually faced a one- to two-sailing wait.

She said the extended wait times were a result of accommodating reservations from the out-of-commission Coastal Celebration, combined with standby spaces of only about 50 vehicles for the remaining sailings and recommended customers travel as foot passengers.

Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay is the busiest ferry link between the B.C. mainland and Vancouver Island.

Johnston said that ferry tower controllers saw that many passengers with reservations hadn't shown up Tuesday morning and had to manually override the current conditions webpage as the day went on. 

She acknowledged the page may not have had accurate information during a chaotic morning. Some customers complained of missing their sailing by five minutes and having to wait hours for a new sailing with space for a car, and long lineups were seen at the ferry terminal in Tsawwassen, as well as at Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver.

"I would suggest that, while we're working around to get current conditions [webpage] to give the best information and ... match what we're seeing at the terminals, I would suggest that Twitter is the way to go," she told Jason D'Souza, host of CBC's All Points West, on Tuesday evening.

When asked about whether Twitter was a reliable source for booking information, given its instability and recent technical issues that prevented people from viewing tweets, Johnston responded that ferry customers could also call the authority directly to find out the latest conditions.

On Tuesday, the ferry authority apologized through Twitter, saying it understood sailing waits were "stressful and frustrating" and they hoped to resume full-service levels soon.

Ferry remains out of commission

The Coastal Celebration is one of the company's largest vessels, but, with it out for repairs once again, eight daily sailings on the busy Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay route have been cancelled with the busy summer travel season in full swing.

The Coastal Celebration has seen several cancelled sailings in the past weeks due to a mechanical issue with its propulsion system. 

It's the same issue that took the vessel out of commission during the Canada Day long weekend.

B.C. Ferries said there is a "strong possibility" the leak is connected to an annual refit at the start of summer. 

It says spill response teams were monitoring the area around the vessel before it went to dry dock, which happened overnight on Monday.

"We've done some initial testing on the No. 2 propeller, which is where the leak was suspected to be coming from," said Stephen Jones, the executive director of engineering at B.C. Ferries, on Tuesday. "We've confirmed that we have a leak on one blade of that four-bladed propeller, and we have to do more testing."

Jones said it's the first such failure they've had on the ship in its 15-year lifespan and added that if the repair was simple, the ferry could be back in service this weekend.

"It's very difficult for me to speculate on the longest possible repair that there might be," he said. "Nobody is as conscious of getting this thing back as quickly as possible as the engineers and the technicians who are working on this problem.

"We'll have a better sense of that for you tomorrow afternoon."