My response to a correspondent who commented on my document:“The Snug Cove Village Plan (SCVP) and Ferry Marshalling:

A Common Sense approach”David R. Hill, PEng, FBCS

Dear <Name Deleted>,

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

On Apr 27, 2012, at 10:38 AM, <Name Deleted> wrote: (my responses are interspersed with the original text)

ND: … I’m looking at only one aspect of it, and that is the walk to and from the ferry. It’s hard to believe that this distance is as is claimed “far less to walk from the lower Cove than much of the existing ferry area”. (whatever “much of the existing ferry area means”).

DRH: The attached diagram, coupled with my response to your points below, may give you a better feeling for where I am coming from. In writing the document I sent you, I was trying to keep it reasonably concise. Perhaps too concise! :-)

ND: I suppose you are thinking that most walk-on passengers will either take the bus (which I’m assuming they will board or exit at the turning area) or will be met or dropped off by someone in a car at the turning area or perhaps in the parking area.

DRH: Yes, that is exactly right, and for those who wanted to be “dropped-off ” the arrangements would be much smoother, and they would be dropped off right next to the ferry dock (hopefully with a cosier waiting room in case the weather was bad). Walk-on passengers, except those in the immediate vicinity of the village, would take the bus—as they do at present.

ND: Are there other possibilities that walk-on passengers might require? Might they need to walk across the lagoon into Miller’s Landing. Obviously a longer walk than the present one (even though you say it is only 3 or 4 minutes along the boardwalk to the lower Cove). Might passengers have parked a car in the lot off Village Road. That’s a longer walk, too. You could hop on the bus when you are leaving the ferry and get off in the upper Cove. There are frequently used stopping off places along Government Road that will not be as easily accessible—the library, the Snug, the General Store.

DRH: If they wanted to park a car and walk on, there is a lot of parking built right into the ferry marshalling area, so they could park and then walk to get on the ferry. The walk would be a much smoother walk and cer-tainly not much longer. (For example, from the pay lot by the village store to the ferry gate is over [400] yards; from the parking area that is part of the south side to the ferry dock would be [400 to] 600 level yards, give or take—an extra [200 yards at most]. If they caught the bus, they’d be taken right to the dock, as with the present arrangement but, again, a much smoother traffic flow). If they walked from the north side—Snug Point, Mel-more. Lenora, etc—they’d have an extra [700] yards or so to walk. People living on Cates Hill would be closer to the new ferry than to the current ferry. So, some give and take between different residential areas.

Incidentally, people can use paths other than the boardwalk (e.g. more in the direction of the baseball field). Some of these exist already and [can be seen] in the original document figure 1, but some could even be added. Such paths are often ignored when people wonder about walking to and from the village.

ND: I wrote this and then set it aside and this morning began to think about it again. In terms of pedestrians getting to the ferry, people could be driven down Government Road and dropped off near the boardwalk, where presumably there will be less traffic.

DRH: They could, though it wouldn’t be necessary. The roadways and parking that serve the ferry in the pro-posed new scheme are designed to facilitate traffic flow regardless of marshalling and parking. Traffic density should not be an issue. It certainly would be less than at present, where the road serves two different functions.

ND: Coming off the ferry, people could walk along the boardwalk and be met on Government Road. This op-tion would cancel some of my objections.

2

DRH: It is certainly a reasonable proposal but, as I say, not really necessary if you look at the traffic arrangements in the [marshalling] document (figure 2 shows the most complicated segment of the new marshalling roadways).

ND: A thought about cars using the proposed southside marshaling: it seems that the Government Road/Miller Road intersection will be exceptionally busy. Cars will be arriving from the west side of the island and turning right while others coming from the east side will have to get across the intersection. The winners in terms of saved time, it would seem, would be those who live in Valhalla. Probably not a big objection.

DRH: Well, that intersection (the “Four Corners”) is pretty busy with the present arrangements, when the ferry is unloading. The traffic would just be coming from a different direction, but without the traffic destined for Valhalla etc. One variant that has been proposed is to put a large roundabout at that intersection, which would facilitate traffic flow. Some traffic would also head down into the village, of course, which would be easier than the left turning traffic that occurs during ferry unloading at present, and tends to hamper the flow of traffic off the ferry.

ND: I cannot even begin to think about whether the community can afford this.

DRH: The community certainly *can’t* afford to invest $25 million or so. That is why I had a section on the financing. Mark Collins made it clear that not only does BC Ferries regard the south side option as desirable, from an operational point of view, but—if the scheme were approved and went ahead—they would arrange the financing and cost recovery. Mark is Vice-President Engineering, and therefore responsible for terminal con-struction. They spend around $128 million a year on such projects. [Significant edit: Recently they built facili-ties at Klemtu at a cost of $25 million, including a $5 million dock, 100% financed by the federal and provincial governments]. The cost recovery, assuming a 25 year amortization and a municipal interest rate of around 2% would put about 50 cents on a passenger fare and $1.50 on a vehicle fare, even if there were no more traffic than at present. We’ve seen bigger increases than that over the last three years for no particular benefit (though they did make the inside of the Cap prettier! :-)

ND: I’m not convinced that the present arrangement is that bad.

DRH: In some ways there’s a lot to be said for the current arrangement. Better than the council spending lots of tax dollars on a scheme that really doesn’t improve things, but destroys the north park. However, it nixes the idea of making Snug Cove more attractive, and makes no provision for emergency evacuation, nor does it reduce overloads. It doesn’t even help the ferry keep to schedule, and more fuel is used negotiating the curve into the current dock than to the new dock which is straight in and nearer to Queen Charlotte Channel.

One of its advantages is that people in the ferry lineup can go to a number of places to pick up a coffee, a newspaper, or whatever. ... I have attached an aerial view of the cove with distance circles marked. The circles show the distance from an arbitrary “village centre” which is taken to be “The Snug” (which is [270] yards or so from the ferry traffic light). The south side ferry marshalling would be south of the Bowfest grounds (which are visible at the bottom of the view, somewhat inside the 300 yard circle where it crossed the five-o’clock direction (lined up with the direction of the boardwalk). The [green] patch in the centre shows stuff that is within 50 yards of the Snug. You’ll notice that the “Four Corners” intersection is roughly [500] yards from the ferry traffic light, and the end of the ferry line as actually off the picture [roughly a 1000] yards from the ferry traffic light ([800+ yards from The Snug, which is [270] yards from the ferry traffic light). [Later addition: On average, people would be closer to the village facilities.]

ND: By the way, we are told that the present arrangement is dangerous. How many people have been injured as a result of it?

DRH: I don’t know the answer to that one. You’d have to ask the RCMP, but I’ll try to find out. Remember, dan-ger is not something that causes frequent accidents, but something that increases the risk of such accidents. This is analogous to fire doors in a theatre. How many theatre fires have there been in Canada in the last 10 years? If very few [or none], that doesn’t mean we can dispense with fire doors, nor does it mean we don’t need a means of rapidly evacuating the island in case of an earthquake or major forest fire! A second ferry dock is desirable any-way because the island depends on the ferry, and a foot ferry doesn’t really cut it. We depends on the arrival of all kinds of goods, apart from commuters needing their vehicles. When I was commuting, I had to have a vehicle because my clients were scattered all over the GVRD. The whole coast, and places like Salt Spring Island, have mostly double ferry docks (Salt Spring has three!).

3

Incidentally, I have been told that it would be better to put a second dock in Seymour Bay. I have recently walked around Seymour Bay. It is all high bank and solid rock. Moreover, it is open to storms, unlike Snug Cove. In my opinion, it is not feasible to put a ferry dock and marshalling area in Seymour Bay. [Later addition: Ac-cording to an informed source, they may have meant a foot ferry landing, but all island journey times to and from the ferry would significantly increase, and the Cove would be totally inaccessible.]

I have it from a usually reliable source, that the council is set on putting ferry marshalling in the north park, behind a row of new buildings built along the north side of Government Road. This may be the real reason for the opposition to the south side option, a reason that has probably been in place for some time now. [Later addi-tion: At the council meeting on 2012-11-13, several council members, including the mayor, stated that the north side of Government Road (in the words of one) “is crying out for development”, and the current consultant, Tom Fletcher, proposed an area of land and road loop—not a “loop road”—in the north park that could be used for such development.]

I really appreciate you taking the time to consider the issues involved and respond. The questions of walks and parking are actually, IMHO, important. Obviously there are other important issues too.

Warm regards.

david

Note: The text has been slightly edited (square brackets). Significant changes are explicitly noted. The diagram has been updated.

Figure 1: Straight line distances from the “Snug” (to convert yards to metres, multiply by 0.91)