BC Ferries has this week lodged its annual performance reports with the BC Ferries Commissioner, revealing how each route has performed during the 12 months to March, 2016. Also published are the results of the 2015 customer satisfaction survey, covering a sample of routes including Route 19 to Gabriola.
Route 19 Financial Performance
This time last year, BC Ferries reported an operating deficit (excluding deferred costs) of $242,000 on Route 19. This year, that deficit has been turned round to a $110,000 surplus – achieved primarily through increased fares revenue and reduced capital costs. This modest surplus represents a 1% margin on annual turnover.
Farebox revenue (including social program reimbursement from government) fell just $379,000 short of covering direct operating costs in 2015/16 – compared to the shortfall of $532,000 reported last year (and almost $1.5 million in the year preceding the service cuts). Expressed another way, the shortfall against direct operating costs is now just $66 for each round trip from Gabriola.
Significant cost and revenue changes from 2014/15 include:
- Revenue from vehicle fares up by $247,000 (+8.5%)
- Revenue from passenger fares up by $118,000 (+5.2%)
- Social Program reimbursements (Seniors, students etc) up by $37,000 (+4.4%)
- Direct operating costs (labour, fuel, maintenance) up by $249,000 (+3.8%)
- Financing & Amortisation costs down by $175,000 (-5.6%)
- Provincial & Federal Support (Service Fees) down by $65,000 (-1.8%)
Route 19 Operational Performance
Operational improvements reported in 2015/16 include:
- Vehicle traffic up by 3.2% (but still 0.3% down from the year before the service cuts of 2014)
- Passenger traffic up by 2.6% (up 1.3% from the year before the service cuts)
- Vehicle capacity utilisation up from 49.6% to 51.7% (the highest reported since 2008)
- On-time performance up from 90.1% to 95.8% of departures within 10 minutes of scheduled time
- Percentage of overloaded sailings down from 7.8% to 5.6% ( but still 0.5% more than 2013/14, before the cuts)
Customer Satisfaction
In the year following the service cuts, the proportion of customers expressing satisfaction with the Gabriola ferry service fell dramatically from 84% to just 56%. Following a series of corrective measures agreed between the FAC and BC Ferries, satisfaction levels returned to 81% in 2015 according to the latest independent customer survey.
Before the service cuts, customers from Gabriola reported high levels of satisfaction with the frequency of the ferry schedule with a satisfaction score of 4.0 (out of 5). After the service cuts, that plummeted to just 2.3 out of 5, but following schedule adjustments in April 2015, satisfaction with the service frequency has risen back to 3.2 out of 5.
Asked whether the first ferry is early enough, the satisfaction score fell from 4.3 to 3.6 in 2014 (despite there being no significant change to the time of the first ferry in April 2014) – and has remained at 3.6 in 2015, even though the first ferry from Gabriola now leaves 45 minutes later following the April 2015 schedule adjustments.
In 2013 (when the last ferry left Nanaimo at 11.30pm) passenger satisfaction with the timing of the last ferry also scored 4.0 out of 5. When the last ferry was retimed to 11.05pm, the score fell back to 3.1 in 2014. Since then, despite the last ferry now leaving at 11pm, the satisfaction score rose in 2015 back up to 3.5 out of 5.
Satisfaction with on-time performance has improved significantly from 2.7 out of 5 in 2014 to 3.8 in 2015 – almost back to its pre-cuts level of 3.9 reported in 2013.
Also improved is customers’ perception of their ability to get on to the desired ferry – up from 2.8 out of 5 in 2014 to 3.4 in 2015, reflecting a fall in the number of sailings that are now overloaded. However, customers remain comparatively dissatisfied with their ability to connect with other ferry routes (especially route 2 to and from Departure Bay) with the score rising from 2.7 to just 2.9 in 2015.
A copy of the full annual report from BC Ferries to the BC Ferries Commissioner can be downloaded here. A summary of performance reports since 2012 can also be found on our Route 19 Performance page on this website.