A proposed passenger-only ferry service between the Sunshine Coast and downtown Vancouver has taken another step forward.
Greenline Ferry CEO Callum Campbell says they’ve picked BMT, a maritime design consultancy in Britain, to design a 32-meter all electric catamaran that will carry up to 150 passengers, is wheelchair accessible and has space for passengers to bring bicycles aboard.
“BMT has decades of experience creating robust passenger vessel designs and embracing innovations in the maritime industry. We’re very pleased we could work with them on this project and couldn’t be more excited about the resulting design.”
Alex Blake, Senior Naval Architect at BMT, says the Greenline ferry design is going to be a fresh feeling boat with no form of internal combustion on board.
He says one of the primary challenges in designing the vessel is having enough batteries to power it appropriately.
“Batteries aren’t as energy dense as traditional fuels, so we had the physical challenge of fitting it all into the boat. “We also had to consider how to cool the batteries and ventilate the spaces.”
Blake says the core design of the Greenline boat can be modified in various ways to suit different routes in the future.
“If we wanted to go slower, we might be able to take some batteries out,” Blake says, “but equally if we wanted to go for a further distance, we could maintain the current batteries and optimise for that.
Blake says they would not have to radically change the design of the vessel to accommodate that.
The vessel will have a typical speed of 23 knots, or about 40 kilometres per hour.
Campbell says the Greenline team is already thinking about how the design might be adapted to suit additional routes.
West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country MP Patrick Weiler says he has been in talks with Greenline and local communities about ensuring the plan can move forward.
Weiler says one of the things that could be part of their business case would be some of the investment tax credits the federal government has introduced recently.
Greenline’s plan is to launch passenger-only ferry service between Gibsons, Bowen Island and downtown Vancouver in 2027.
