This coming week, from Monday, June 24, to Thursday, June 27, Bowen Lift is hosting an on-board ferry ride sharing week during the commuter ferry runs on the 4:45, 5:50 and 6:50 p.m. sailings from Horseshoe Bay to Snug Cove.
The Chillbillies will be on hand on Monday in the passenger lounge for merriment. There are new free neighbourhood mirror tags for drivers and new free pedestrian colour thumb tags to distribute for foot passengers. Listen for the departure announcement on Monday and come up from the car deck.
The focus now is on foot passengers. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we are looking for volunteer foot passengers and drivers from every neighbourhood to try it out. These are rehearsal and practice days. The goal is to jump start the system. We will present the idea on Monday or ask passengers on their normal sailings to be ready to go for it.
Upon departure from Horseshoe Bay during the practice days, there will be an announcement inviting volunteer foot passengers to go down to the car deck. You will be met by Lift folks, ready to help (there will also be Lift folks in the passenger lounge and an info desk in the concession area).
On departure, ride seekers go down and walk the car deck to find rides home. You can hold up pedestrian neighbourhood thumb tags to show drivers or just look for mirror tags and bumper stickers. Meanwhile, drivers willing to share rides on the sailing display their neighbourhood mirror tags.
When foot passengers find a ride, they tell the driver they will come back down when the ferry gets into Snug Cove, giving drivers private time during the crossing. Then most important - foot passengers call or text home to say they have a ride. These calls to save extra car trips are goal number one. If this works, saved the trips will add up.
Over time, it hoped that participants will naturally connect for rides to the ferry in the mornings and sharing will grow. There are 40 to 60 islanders who park in the cove to ride the ferry. These drivers are foot passengers who may also give lifts. Display neighbourhood foot passenger tags in the pedestrian lounge areas to connect with these drivers.
That's it. Easy as one plus one equals two in a car.
Will islanders do it? Every day, many of us and our vehicles make the trip to and from the ferry. Neighbours take separate car trips, drop off partners and family, or park in the cove and walk on, or drive on the ferry on our way to the mainland and the large metropolis. In the afternoons and evenings, the same verse is sung in reverse.
Ride sharing is kind of like recycling transportation. Bowen with its unique loop of shared ferry service that everyone uses that connects with our roads home into our neighborhoods is perfectly scaled for it.
We are still at the very beginning and perhaps it is like the beginning of recycling before BIRD was created. We are good at that. This island is a living social network. There is a kind of knowing and shared understanding we have as islanders. We cross the water. We share a collective awareness and consciousness of place.
We are at home here. If not here, where? Let's see if we can make this work.
BowenLIFT
