Prices are going up for B.C. Ferries passengers headed for Vancouver Island or the Sunshine Coast.
Effective Dec. 12, the ferry corporation will tack a new 2.5 per cent fuel surcharge on tickets between Horseshoe Bay and Langdale. This translates into a 30-cent hike on an adult passenger ticket to Langdale, and an additional $1.10 for a passenger vehicle.
Travellers headed from West Vancouver to Nanaimo will see the existing fuel surcharge double to five per cent. The surcharge for trips leaving Tsawwassen for Vancouver Island also rises to five per cent. This adds 70 cents to a passenger ticket and $2.35 for a car.
BC Ferries annual fuel cost was $45.9 million in 2003, the Crown corporation stated in a written release. While the company has reduced its fuel consumption by approximately five per cent since then, BC Ferries projects its 2011/2012 fuel procurement costs could be over $120 million.
Non-partisan watchdog group IntegrityBC questioned the timing of the price increases.
While travellers begrudgingly put up with fuel surcharges as a fact of life, they shouldn't be used as a cash grab just before the holiday season, said executive director Dermod Travis, also in a release. Travis argued that rising fuel prices should have been budgeted for earlier in the year.
It's difficult to imagine that BC Ferries didn't budget for short-term price fluctuations in this forecast, wrote Travis. Drivers already suspect that gas companies hike prices before long weekends to pad profits from increased travelling, but that doesn't make it right for a company that serves British Columbians to play the same game on its customers.
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