3308 replies to this topic

[Victoria Watcher]

they are in most cases less than 24 hours away from the end of the cruise.  presumably they are discharging it here because it's cheaper or easier than seattle (home port).  so let's just look closer at what the situation is.

[aastra]

Truth and accuracy in media, and yet another "hidden gem" (for such an itsy-bitsy tiny city it really is amazing how absolutely everything in Victoria is hidden away here or there, off the beaten track, etc.):

 

 

The city racked up more than 260 ship visits in 2019. A record-breaking 1 million cruise ship passengers and crew visited Victoria this year; double the population of Vancouver Island.

 

 

This wave of cruise visits is all a relatively recent phenomenon for Victoria...

 

 

Victorians might be more comfortable with cruise ships for the simple fact that they can’t see them. In Venice, cruise vessels are infamous for literally blocking out the sun when they pass by the city’s historic districts. But with Ogden Point tucked away on the western edge of James Bay, an 170,000-tonne cruise ship can get in and out of Greater Victoria whilst remaining invisible to all but a handful of waterfront properties.

 

from https://www.capnews....-carbon-climate

[AllseeingEye]

^ Not sure - what part of the last paragraph is untrue?

 

We live in the Selkirk neighborhood. I couldn't tell you offhand when a cruise ship is or is not in port in Victoria. Ditto for my sister & brother in law perched up there on top of Bear Mtn, or my kid who lives in the Quadra/Cloverdale area. By contrast when I worked on the tenth floor of a tower one block off the d/t Vancouver waterfront, more often than not it looked like the cruise ships were going to tie up to the coffee machine in the staff kitchen.

 

From our current home I'll only have a very brief glimpse providing any inkling whatsoever of the presence of a cruise ship docked here if I'm on high Catherine Street heading south toward Esquimalt Rd. Otherwise like most people not resident in James Bay (or the Metchosin waterfront), I need to trek over to Ogden Point to see anything that floats that might be worthwhile seeing.

[Victoria Watcher]

I can’t tell from where I live when a ferry brings in a load of 2000 people - 8 or more times a day.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 22 January 2020 - 06:09 PM.

[Mike K.]

You can see them from Wharf Street, from tons of vantage points in Vic West, from tons of vantage points in Esquimalt.

 

From Colwood, from View Royal, from Metchosin. You can see them from any neighbourhood with a little bit of height in Saanich. My friend near Summit Hill in the CoV sees them.

 

I think the point the writer was making is they pass right by the main square in Venice, but in Victoria they don't dock in the Inner Harbour.

[Victoria Watcher]

how much is a Victoria to Venice cruise?

[LJ]

Ditto for my sister & brother in law perched up there on top of Bear Mtn, 

 

Tell them to go to the 14th hole, they will see them just fine.

[Bernard]

In the last 16 years that I have been living in Greater Victoria I have only seen maybe one or two a year

[aastra]

 

^ Not sure - what part of the last paragraph is untrue?

 

My main points:
Cruise ship visits are not a recent phenomenon.

One million is not double ~800,000.

Obviously anyone who lives/works a long way from the port or who has no view of the water is not going to see ships. This is true in absolutely every port city of any size. It is definitely not a uniquely Victorian thing.

 

In a typical day most Victorians never see the airport or the Swartz Bay terminal or UVic or Langford or the legislative buildings or CFB Esquimalt or Hillside Mall. Are those things at all invisible or hidden away? Or do they merely occupy the specific sites they occupy within a much larger urban dynamic?

(Maybe Greater Victoria needs to massively increase the number of residential highrises around the city? So that more people will have a view of the cruise ships, and thus finally recognize what a problem they are?)

The silliness (as always) is related to the depiction of Victoria that we're trying to push. If Victoria is a tiny town getting overwhelmed by large city problems (for the past ~60 years) then how come everything is always hidden or going unnoticed? If Victoria is a large city then why are we even talking about these things?

 

Put it another way: if Canada's busiest cruise port and all of its supposed menaces truly are invisible/unnoticeable at Ogden Point... then that sounds like a very good situation, all things considered.

(Speaking of the menaces of cruise ships, do I need to mention yet again the James Bay condo ads from the 1970s and 1980s, which noted the proximity to cruise ships as a perk?)

That bit about comparing annual cruise ship passenger numbers to the total population is pure sensationalistic media guff. It has no meaning. Hey, how about the airport or Swartz Bay? They handle many millions of passengers per year. Should we be alarmed? How about YVR? It handles the population of frickin' Texas every year. Should we faint from fright about it? (If anything, the cruise ship numbers should defuse much of the hysteria when you put them in proper perspective. We're talking ~250 ships visiting Victoria for just a few hours each over the course of a long season, dropping a few thousand visitors each time? Most Victorians won't even notice, or so I'm told.)

Anyway, we classify the floatplanes as a problem because they're front and center in the inner harbour. We classify the cruise ships as a problem because they aren't front and center. For the past ~60 years Victorians have been consistently complaining about all the ways their city is a complex, functioning, and varied place, as if they don't want it to be so. Victoria's supposed problems are often the things that other cities wish for.

[aastra]

 

Victoria's supposed problems are often the things that other cities wish for.

 

Heck, Victoria's supposed problems are often the things that Victoria itself wishes for. Everybody wants more industry and more marine industry, don't ya know.*

 

*except when they don't want it

[Victoria Watcher]

The Greater Victoria Harbour Authority plans to temporarily shelve its master plan for the Breakwater District at Ogden Point to focus its efforts on a series of environmental initiatives, including establishing shore power for cruise ships at Ogden Point.

 

The harbour authority is expected to ask the City of Victoria for a five-year extension to develop a master plan that fits with James Bay neighbourhood plans and will include projects that complement the area.

 

 

https://www.timescol...ores-1.24070678

 

The harbour authority has also hired an engineering firm to put together a business case for shore power and determine the options available to pay the estimated $20-million cost.

 

Robertson said funding would likely involve the cruise-ship industry and various levels of government.

 

 

 

why can't they do both?  sell or lease a portion of their property for a privately-run hotel and use the money for shore power.  i know that's a novel idea.  the way things get done here instead is to ask senior governments for money for things like shore power and dolphins.  but it does not have to be done that way.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 07 February 2020 - 06:26 AM.

[Nparker]

 

The Greater Victoria Harbour Authority plans to temporarily shelve its master plan for the Breakwater District at Ogden Point

Another decade another plan. Glad to see the region's planning vs. doing obsession remains alive and well.

[Victoria Watcher]

Another decade another plan. Glad to see the region's planning vs. doing obsession remains alive and well.

 

the article says nothing will move forward until 2025.  imagine a private operation just sitting on an asset (excess lands) for 5 years (the old bowling alley site on douglas at tolmie notwithstanding).

[spanky123]

I think that given this year's (at least) cruise business to Victoria is likely to be a disaster given the virus and both passenger and cruise industry reluctance to book travel, it may take 5 years to recover.

Edited by spanky123, 07 February 2020 - 07:35 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

I think that given this year's (at least) cruise business to Victoria is likely to be a disaster given the virus and both passenger and cruise industry reluctance to book travel, it may take 5 years to recover.

 

i'm not sure if follow.  cruise lines do not travel short of capacity.  so every boat that comes here this summer will be full even if they fill them with less-than-full-price fares.  so you might have a few cheaper passengers onboard this summer but they will all be full and all scheduled arrivals will arrive.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 07 February 2020 - 07:45 AM.

[spanky123]

i'm not sure if follow.  cruise lines do not travel short of capacity.  so every boat that comes here this summer will be full even if they fill them with less-than-full-price fares.  so you might have a few cheaper passengers onboard this summer but they will all be full and all scheduled arrivals will arrive.

 

Respectfully I don't agree. If a cruise line thinks that they may face a quarantine requiring cancellations and extra accommodations for guests then they won't send the ship. Passengers won't book if they think that they face a higher risk of infection and may wind up with an extra 14 days added on to their "vacation". 

[Victoria Watcher]

i see.  sort of.  but i'm not sure our ships are more likely to be quarantined or infected than any other ships worldwide.  i'm not sure the statistics but i'd be surprised if usa tourists did not make up 75% of our ships' passengers or more.  not asians.

 

and if you pull our ship at last minute (relatively) where do you deploy it for recovery of reasonable revenue service on short notice?

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 07 February 2020 - 08:00 AM.

[lanforod]

It's not like we've never had pandemics before. Unless it becomes wide spread here, or there are specific ships with significant numbers of passenger infections (like in Japan now on the Diamond Princess), I doubt we'll see a significant change in volume. Cruise lines may see less profit, but they have plenty of room there.

Edited by lanforod, 07 February 2020 - 08:22 AM.

[Nparker]

Also, who's to say this "pandemic" won't have run its course by the time the Victoria cruise season is in full swing? Surely the media will have moved its hype onto something else by then.

[Victoria Watcher]

I doubt we'll see a significant change in volume. Cruise lines may see less profit, but they have plenty of room there.

 

this is true.  cruise lines are tremendously profitable right now.  all the players are building more and bigger ships because they simply see their core business being the best investment for all the cash they have.  there is plenty of ocean.  plenty of port capacity.  but a finite number of ships going 365 mostly.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 07 February 2020 - 08:30 AM.