Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is 456 km (283 mi) in length, 100 km (62 mi) in width at its widest point, and 32,100 km2 (12,400 sq mi) in total area, while 31,285 km2 (12,079 sq mi) are of land. The island is the largest by area and the most populous along the west coasts of the Americas.
The fast ferry scandal was a political affair in the late 1990s relating to the construction of three fast ferries by the Canadian provincial crown corporation BC Ferries under direction of the Executive Council of British Columbia, headed at the time by Premier Glen Clark of the New Democratic Party.
British Columbia Ferry Services Inc., operating as BC Ferries (BCF), is a former provincial Crown corporation, now operating as an independently managed, publicly owned Canadian company. BC Ferries provides all major passenger and vehicle ferry services for coastal and island communities in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Set up in 1960 to provide a similar service to that provided by the Black Ball Line and the Canadian Pacific Railway, which were affected by job action at the time, BC Ferries has become the largest passenger ferry line in North America, operating a fleet of 41 vessels with a total passenger and crew capacity of over 27,000, serving 47 locations on the B.C. coast.
Nanaimo is a city of about 100,000 on the east coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada. "The Harbour City" was previously known as the "Hub City", which was attributed to its original layout design with streets radiating from the shoreline like the spokes of a wagon wheel, and to its relatively central location on Vancouver Island. Nanaimo is the headquarters of the Regional District of Nanaimo.
The SeaBus is a passenger-only ferry service in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It crosses Burrard Inlet to connect the cities of Vancouver and North Vancouver. Owned by TransLink and operated by the Coast Mountain Bus Company, the SeaBus forms an important part of the region's integrated public transportation system. In 2023, the SeaBus had a ridership of 5,127,000, or about 13,300 per weekday as of the first quarter of 2024.
Washington State Ferries (WSF) is a government agency that operates automobile and passenger ferry service in the U.S. state of Washington as part of the Washington State Department of Transportation. It runs ten routes serving 20 terminals located around Puget Sound and in the San Juan Islands, designated as part of the state highway system. The agency maintains a fleet of 21 vessels that are able to carry passengers and vehicles.
The Island Corridor, previously the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway, is a railway operation on Vancouver Island. It is owned by the Island Corridor Foundation, a registered charity. The railway line is 225 kilometres (140 mi) in length from Victoria to Courtenay, known as the Victoria Subdivision, with a branch line from Parksville to Port Alberni, known as the Port Alberni Subdivision, of 64 kilometres (40 mi), for a total 289 kilometres (180 mi) of mainline track. In 2006, the Island Corridor Foundation acquired the railway's ownership from RailAmerica and Canadian Pacific Railway.
HarbourLynx was a private company based in Nanaimo, British Columbia that provided passenger-only high speed ferry service between the city centres of Nanaimo and Vancouver.
Coastal-class ferries, also known as the "Super-C class" are three ferries owned and operated by BC Ferries of British Columbia, Canada and were built at the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft shipyard in Flensburg, Germany. They are the second-largest ships in the BC Ferries fleet, surpassed only by the two larger, single-ended Spirit-class ferries. At the time of their building, the three ships were the largest double-ended ferries in the world, however the record has since been surpassed.
MV Queen of Nanaimo is a Burnaby-class passenger vessel that was operated by BC Ferries from the time it entered service in 1964 until 2017. Queen of Nanaimo was used to ferry passengers and vehicles from mainland British Columbia, Canada to the islands off its coast. In 2017, the vessel was sold to Goundar Shipping Ltd. and renamed MV Lomaiviti Princess V for service in Fiji.
The PacifiCat class of fast ferries was operated from June 1999 to March 2000 by BC Ferries in British Columbia, Canada. Three PacifiCat catamarans - Explorer, Discovery, and Voyager - were built between 1996 and 2000 as part of a major public project to improve ferry service between the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. The first two catamarans were briefly used for revenue service between Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver and Departure Bay in Nanaimo from 1999 to March 2000. The third catamaran, PacifiCat Voyager, was completed in early 2000 but had yet to enter revenue service by the time the project was cancelled.
Condor Ferries is an operator of passenger and freight ferry services between the United Kingdom, Guernsey, Jersey and France.
Transportation in Vancouver, British Columbia, has many of the features of modern cities worldwide. Unlike many large metropolises, Vancouver has no freeways into or through the downtown area. A proposed freeway through the downtown was rejected in the 1960s by a coalition of citizens, community leaders and planners. This event "signalled the emergence of a new concept of the urban landscape" and has been a consistent element of the city's planning ever since.
The King County Water Taxi is a passenger-only fast ferry service operated by the King County Metro Transit Department, Marine Division. It operates two routes between Downtown Seattle and West Seattle or Vashon Island.
Spirit of Vancouver Island is an S-class ferry, part of the BC Ferries fleet. Along with MV Spirit of British Columbia, it is the largest in the BC Ferries fleet. The ship was completed in 1994 and serves the Swartz Bay – Tsawwassen route. In 2018, Spirit of Vancouver Island began a mid-life refit in Poland, where it was converted to a dual-fuel system to allow liquefied natural gas propulsion. The vessel returned to service in 2019.
Nanaimo Harbour, also known as the Port of Nanaimo, is a natural harbour on the east coast of Vancouver Island in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The city of Nanaimo runs along the west side of the harbour. Three islands, Newcastle, Protection, and Gabriola, along with Duke Point, form the eastern edge. The Port of Nanaimo includes the Inner Harbour, Nanaimo River estuary, Departure Bay, the waters on the east side of Newcastle and Protection Islands, and Northumberland Channel. The port is under the management of the Nanaimo Port Authority.
The Anacortes–San Juan Islands ferry is a system of ferry route operated by Washington State Ferries. The routes serve Anacortes, Lopez Island, Shaw Island, Orcas Island, San Juan Island, and Sidney on Vancouver Island in Canada. Sidney service was suspended in March 2020 and is not planned to resume until 2030. The ferry routes are part of State Route 20 Spur.
Kitsap Fast Ferries is a passenger ferry service operating between Seattle and Kitsap County in the U.S. state of Washington. It is funded and operated by Kitsap Transit and began service in July 2017, with a single boat traveling between Seattle and Bremerton. A second route, from Seattle to Kingston, launched in November 2018, and a third route serving Seattle and Southworth began operating in March 2021. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 1,091,400, or about 40,800 per weekday as of the first quarter of 2024.
The Island-class ferries are ferries owned and operated by BC Ferries. Six vessels were built between 2019 and 2021 by Damen Shipyards Group, a Dutch company, in Romania. The first two ships were launched in mid-March 2019, and commenced service in June 2020. Two of an additional four vessels commenced service in April 2022, and the remaining two are due to enter service in late 2022.
