More tempest in a teapot from the privileged set concerning the often superb service from B.C.Ferries to the island. The ferry runs day in and day out every day of the year, and for the most part you can rely on it to be there at the appointed time. There are occasions when the schedule runs late due to mechanical problems, and it can also run late due to the actions of the riders themselves such as having a car that won’t start for example.
Once in a blue moon, a clown circumvents the ticket booth person and insists the boat won’t sail without them on board, creating a delayed sailing for all the other passengers while the police are called. In the end, this particular clown was forcibly removed after being ordered to do so by the police and then refusing.
The howls of indignation continue even after rather than increasing the cut-off time between ticket sales and when the boat leaves the dock from five minutes to ten minutes like the other routes, they decreased the interval to 3 minutes. This is too short of an interval for safety in my humble opinion. On occasions arriving myself at the terminal with ten minutes to go, have always felt lucky to be boarded rather than upset with the system if it doesn’t happen.
The upshot is that B.C.Ferries have now allowed the late-comers an additional two minutes to be late; perhaps they are playing a little reverse psychology on the situation and in the end some other incident will force the official cut-off time to change and it really will be then ten minutes.
Elsewhere in the business of fixing things that were not broken in the first place, attended the public hearing to listen first hand the view from most speakers that we need not less, but more regulation from the Municipality. This island is the bedroom community of one of the highest per capita income regions in the country, and most of those people spent their money on the property not to share it but to use for themselves alone. The result is the absolute worst rental units available here are better than the average place available on the mainland.
Another dichotomy came about that instead of spending almost nothing to simply register where rental units are, $35,000 gets set aside to be spent on the exercise of enshrining more rules and regulations where existing laws already cover most health and safety situations.