/\....its gnarly again today at the major terminals with a 1-2 sailing wait from Swartz Bay as of an hour ago.
Hard to believe that for one of the largest ferry fleets in the world there are, according to their PR spokeswoman on the news a few weeks ago, literally no available ships on standby to be plugged into the schedule on an as-required emergency basis when car+passenger volumes warrant. As in, they don't physically exist.
IMO they need to look at an alternate model and incorporate some sort of hybrid system such as a large truck/bus/oversized vehicles-only sailing from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay, or the reverse as needed, during those peak times (anticipated or not) because there really is no good excuse in 2018 why there should be 3-4 sailing waits per the story grantpalin linked above.
I think not so many years ago they had the capability to loop into service one of the old V-class boats in the event of extended waits but I think the Queen of New Westminster is the last remaining ship from that class and I know she's had a series of mechanical issues in the last few years - hell she's 55 years old so that is no surprise. Maybe they need to look at something really out of the box like contracting with Seaspan to offload some of those oversized vehicles off the BCF ships on the busiest mainland-Swartz Bay run to free up space for more cars. That may or not be feasible but the point is they need to get creative to address the issue because it won't resolve itself.