Why are BC residents at the mercy of tourism when we literally use the ferries to live? Ferries are completely unusable in the summer that I just plan my life so that I don’t need to go the mainland and I think that’s unfair. You know, considering we pay taxes for this shit.
Edit: Just want to express my distaste for the lemmy community yet again. I posted this as a “change my view” sort of thing and you all just downvote it into disappearance. There are very good comments in this thread that real people put effort into. If you disagree, simply don’t vote at all. I didn’t break any rules. This behaviour is what prevents this platform from growing.
Oh, one thing to mention - if you’re a resident in Nanaimo who frequently needs to go downtown you might just consider keeping your car on the mainland. It’s theoretically possible to have a ferry with no walk-on room but it almost never happens in practice.
And, like, living on an island is a “luxury” there are complete services on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast so in theory you can do things locally but if you choose to live there the limited transportation is something you should be aware of.
We usually walk on for day trips to Vancouver and use transit (or even Uber). Horseshoe Bay is well served by the 257 Express bus to downtown.
There’s also Uber/Lyft/taxis and Shaw Go bike rentals. Saves a fair bit. Also opens up the Hullo walk on ferry.
As to the local/commuter vs. tourist thing, it’s debatable either way which is the bigger benefit.
As a local, I think you have a fair amount of flexibility. Not as much as would be ideal, but Hullo has certainly taken some of the load off of BC Ferries (similar to the Seaspan barge for commercial traffic).