Last June, Kelly and Brian Flurer spotted a puff of smoke on the forested bluffs above Cameron Lake as they drove winding Highway 4. It was a minor distraction on a drive the couple has done countless times — from spring to fall, the owners of the seafood processing company Flurer Smokery in Port Alberni’s The Dock+ food hub cross the Island several times a week to make deliveries. Both assumed a few helicopter-slung bucketloads of water would be enough to snuff the small blaze.
A few days later, they were shocked to learn that the Cameron Lake fire had grown to 80 hectares and was out of control. Then, as the fire raged on steep, unstable terrain and rained rocks and wood debris onto the highway below, officials closed the highway.
Reality sank in for people living in the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District. The only public, paved road linking the citizens of Bamfield, Port Alberni, Ucluelet and Tofino with the rest of B.C. — a lifeline for many businesses — was cut off for two full weeks.
“It had a huge impact. The majority of our market is on the east side of Vancouver Island,” says Kelly Flurer.
It meant that Brian, like many others, was forced to take the four-hour detour on bumpy logging roads from Alberni Inlet to Lake Cowichan. It was stressful, dusty and dangerous, given the number of people making the same trip, most of them unaccustomed to driving unpaved logging roads.
Their business took a hit and it made for a hectic summer. However, it was worse for others, like sport fishing guides and hoteliers who saw weeks of bookings suddenly evaporate. The road closures cost west Vancouver Island communities an estimated $44 million.
It was an eye-opener.
The disruption of life, business and travel caused by a single forest fire put a punctuation mark on a perennial reality: Vancouver Island has some serious transportation bottlenecks, pain points and vulnerabilities, whether it’s the movement of people or goods. Both could benefit from a major rethink and reboot.
Troubled Waters
Transportation has been the subject of numerous studies in the past and we’re studying it yet again. Last summer a team from Island Coastal Economic Trust and Vancouver Island Economic Alliance hit the road to hear from Vancouver Islanders, Gulf Islanders and Sunshine Coasters about what’s needed to better link people and communities.
The provincial government-funded “Island Coastal Inter-Community Transportation Study” couldn’t have been more timely. In 2023, BC Ferries cancelled 1,163 sailings due to crew shortages, in addition to another 1,744 cancellations because of weather and mechanical failures.
It created no shortage of ferry terminal frustration and it put BC Ferries Corporation chief executive officer Nicolas Jimenez in the hot seat. As of April, the province started slapping the ferry corp. with a $7,000 fine every time a major sailing is cancelled because of a lack of crew.
Adding insult to injury, last June, ferry passengers bound for the west side of the Island who were lucky enough to make their sailing then had the pleasure of sitting in hours-long lineups on Highway 4, or navigating the logging road detour via Lake Cowichan.
Brodie Guy, chief executive officer of the trust, led the outreach team for the transportation study. They got an earful and the message was clear — there is a critical lack of affordable, convenient, reliable and frequent passenger service in the region. Guy himself got a taste of it when he decided not to use personal transportation to travel between open houses on the Sunshine Coast.
“We had to call a cab to come from Powell River to pick us up at the [Saltery Bay] ferry terminal. It was expensive,” he says. “We were blown away by the lack of connectivity.”
Over a two-month roadshow that took him to remote coastal First Nations and rural communities, Guy heard many tales of improvised and inadequate passenger transportation.
Many people are relying on ad hoc, and at times unsafe, transportation workarounds, among them people hitchhiking up and down the Sunshine Coast, kids finding lifts between Tofino and Ucluelet for after-school activities and North Islanders struggling to reach Campbell River and the Comox Valley for medical appointments.
Gaps in Transit
According to Guy, transportation companies like Island Link have helped fill the gap left when financially troubled Greyhound Transportation eliminated bus routes on Vancouver Island in 2018, a downsizing effort that also cut routes in northern B.C. and the Interior. However, private operators like Island Link can only be expected to offer service on profitable routes, and that means gaps remain.
Other entrepreneurs are also helping to fill the gaps. In 2020, Coastal Rides, a ride-hailing service, launched on the Sunshine Coast. Another small operator, Whistle!, was offering a similar service in Tofino, but recently suspended operations.
“The fact is connections between many communities are sporadic, unpredictable and unreliable,” Guy says. “I think there are opportunities for public-private partnerships to provide a service where it’s not profitable.”
In January, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure announced $230,000 in funding for the coastal trust to invest in transportation projects and planning flagged by last summer’s study. Among the projects being funded is a shuttle service for the Ditidaht First Nation between Nitinaht Village and Port Alberni, and increased bus service on Mayne Island.
It’s a start, but Guy hopes to see some key transportation investments in upcoming budgets that will further address “connectivity gaps” on Vancouver Island.
The transportation ministry says staff is reviewing the study and considering “potential next steps.”
“The intent of these reports was to get regional perspectives on challenges and opportunities regarding passenger transportation. They provided valuable insights that will inform the Province’s plans going forward,” said Murray Sinclair, a media relations spokesperson for the transportation ministry.
Victoria’s Missing Link
The inter-community study focused on Vancouver Island transportation outside of the Greater Victoria region, but the provincial capital has its own unique transportation pain points. It’s a topic that Thomas Guerrero talks about frequently on his popular blog, Sidewalking Victoria. He started blogging in 2015 because, he says, “At the time there wasn’t a lot of discussion about urbanism in Victoria.” When you discuss urbanism, inevitably you discuss transportation.
Guerrero works downtown at the Ministry of Health on Blanshard Street and gets a daily four-kilometre walk commuting on foot to and from the office. Living close to work was a conscious choice, and one Guerrero knows is not an option for everyone.
“Victoria is a very walkable city,” says Guerrero, who sat on the city’s Active Transportation Advisory Committee for four years.
It’s also a bikeable city, with hundreds of kilometres of dedicated bike lanes and pathways winding throughout the urban core and Saanich Peninsula. In fact, as many Victorians bike downtown as drive cars.
Victoria International Airport is also one for the transportation win column. The airport is a three-time winner of the best regional airport in North America award, in 2012, 2014 and 2020, from Airports Council International. Last year the council gave YYJ the nod in the environmental improvement with limited resources category for its pollinator garden project.
Guerrero’s praise stops at public transit.
“The biggest pain point is public transit. We’re not seeing the kind of investment that we need to happen,” he says. “When people parking downtown say they don’t have viable options, I think that’s true in a lot of cases.”
He gives the Blink RapidBus line, launched last year linking Langford to downtown, barely a passing grade for its lacklustre stations that are like any other bus stop, and bus lanes that only operate during peak times (therefore negating the line’s supposed rapid transit advantage).
“While it has some of the trappings of rapid transit, it isn’t rapid transit,” he wrote in an October 2023 blog post, adding that “a large portion of the population is never going to consider using it.”
Higher Cost for Business
Meanwhile, the costs of upgrading the mothballed Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway into an interurban rapid transit link have skyrocketed over the years as government and municipalities debate the future of this line.
Guerrero views it as a missed opportunity to get frustrated commuters out of their cars and the notorious “Colwood crawl.” Despite being just 14 kilometres from Langford to downtown, it can still take 45 minutes by car on heavily congested days.
Then there’s the Malahat pinch point.
“The fact that we don’t have an alternative way to get across the Malahat and there’s an unused rail line is such a shame,” Guerrero says.
While Vancouver Islanders have no shortage of public and private transportation woes, businesses have their own share of headaches when it comes to the movement of goods to, from and around the Island.
An island economy naturally comes with built-in vulnerabilities. Things we take for granted — like well-stocked grocery stores and gas at the pumps — are not as secure as we might assume. Vancouver Island is home to 16 per cent of the province’s population, yet roughly 90 per cent of our food comes from off-Island, most of it via ferry-dependent transport trucks. Similarly, all fuel comes from the mainland by tugboat-towed fuel barges.
Conservative estimates suggest that given current warehousing capacity, Vancouver Island is perpetually less than a week away from running out of food and fuel.
“Shipping and transport is something I hear about constantly from businesses,” says Julie Sperber, president and CEO of the Vancouver Island Economic Alliance.
On the heels of the passenger transportation study, VIEA embarked on another study, gathering input from businesses and business leaders about how to improve the flow of goods.
“We hope to have this completed by September. We want to know where the challenge points are, where infrastructure investments are needed, and where we might be able to find solutions by pairing the transport of goods and people,” Sperber says. “I know quite a few boutique manufacturers that rely 100 per cent on Canada Post for shipping.”
Sharon and Chris Hooton own one of those Canada Post-dependent boutique businesses. The busy Gabriola Island entrepreneurs run three businesses — the Woodfire Restaurant, The Fire Truck Grill food truck and rapidly growing Woodfire Spice.
From their small, home-based production facility, the couple ships tins of their gourmet spices to more than 100 retailers around Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland and the Gulf Islands. Most recently, they added IGA to their growing list of retailers.
“We’re not huge, but we’re growing,” says Sharon Hooton. She estimates they pay on average $300 per week to Canada Post for shipping — and it’s a cost the business eats for customers who order more than 48 tins of spice.
“We do this to stay competitive,” she says.
Hooton is frustrated by the inefficiencies and duplication of effort, knowing hundreds of other boutique businesses on Vancouver Island and neighbouring islands are handing money to Canada Post every day.
She believes a central distribution system for producers like Woodfire Spice would make a lot of sense.
“We’d be able to deliver in bulk to this distribution centre, and from there our spices could be sorted and shipped to our customers along with other products. It would create jobs on the Island and it would be way more efficient,” Hooton says.
The Big ‘What If?’
That’s exactly what’s behind the Nanaimo Port Authority’s “Duke Point Phase 4 Feasibility Study.” Financed by Transport Canada’s National Trade Corridors Fund, the study is looking into the potential of a major 12- to 24-hectare expansion of the Duke Point shipping terminal that would include additional and larger shipping berths and new warehousing and distribution infrastructure.
Sperber views the Nanaimo port as a linchpin of the Island economy and key to unplugging some of the shipping and trucking bottlenecks that plague Island businesses.
“A business in Tofino could partner with a business in Port McNeill to ship to the Nanaimo port and fill a pallet to then ship off-Island,” Sperber says.
In the meantime, for the Hootons multiple trips per week to the Gabriola Island post office with boxes of Woodfire Spice is their shipping modus operandi.
On the other side of Vancouver Island, Kelly Flurer takes a long pause when asked if last June’s Highway 4 closure has caused her to rethink the decision to relocate their business from Campbell River to Port Alberni in 2020.
Instead she answers with a question.
“What will happen if there’s a big disaster and you have to get 30,000 or 40,000 people to the other side of the Island?” Flurer asks.
That’s a big “what if?” and an important one as Vancouver Island transportation is put under the microscope once again.
