you’d expect that by now, the high-priced help at B.C. Ferries would have had everything shipshape, with a firm hand on the helm and a clear view of the horizon. Unfortunately, these corporate captains remain as mentally rudderless as their political masters, so this “marine highway” that’s so vital to British Columbia’s economy continues to deteriorate.

Ridership aboard the 36-vessel fleet remains in decline, fares for the 20 million passengers annually continue to rise – often faster than inflation – and many communities served by B.C. Ferries’ 25 routes now struggle economically.

As the sole shareholder, Victoria still oversees the quasi-private corporation that was redirected in 2003 to run itself as a user-pay, profit-making company. But that experiment continues to fail. Only last April, for example, B.C. Ferries hiked fares yet again and initiated its most drastic service cuts to date.

Consequently, the vicious downward cycle repeats: fares increase, ridership drops, B.C. Ferries then cuts service to make up the lost revenue.

It’s now reached the point at which any money B.C. Ferries believes it’s saving from service cuts is more than offset by lost tax income for Victoria from economic slowdowns in ferry-served communities. How dumb is that?

Hang on, it gets dumber.

The only fix that B.C.’s government has been able to devise lately is, at best, a gamble. In fact, it is gambling.

Victoria and B.C. Ferries now seriously propose to put slot machines aboard B.C. Ferries vessels on major routes between the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. Rumours abound that even the fleet’s newest ships were prewired for slot machines.

The idea was first proposed late last fall. But according to recent Freedom of Information data released by The Tyee, an independent B.C.-based online magazine, the slot machine proposal originated with the B.C. Lottery Corp., the provincial government-owned company that oversees the fast-growing gambling cash cow that now brings in more than $2 billion annually for Victoria.

Public reaction to the slots is strongly negative, for both moral and economic reasons. Morally, problem gambling in B.C. is a growth industry; economically, critics say, slots on the ships will not compensate for declining ridership revenue.

The fact is, both the B.C. governing Liberals and B.C. Ferries executive are in denial. They fail to realize that the coastal ferry system is another form of highway, the only one that can feed economic development and growth in ferry-dependent communities. However, economies in coastal communities served by B.C. Ferries, including major towns on Vancouver Island, are being severely handicapped, thanks to B.C. Ferries’ mismanagement. Tourism is in serious decline and young, ferry- dependent families in those communities are moving elsewhere for job opportunities.

In the face of this obvious and growing evidence, Premier Christy Clark, her cabinet and the executives at B.C. Ferries have opted for the glitz and glitter of floating casinos as a long-term solution.

Instead, what’s needed is for B.C. Ferries to return to its pre-2003 role as a publicly funded provider of low-cost, reliable, bare-bones marine transportation that serves coastal economies in much the same way that blacktop highways serve the rest of B.C.

© 2014 Investment Executive. All rights reserved.