Metro Transit is recommending it go ahead with proposed cuts to ferry services despite backlash from some councillors.
In a report coming before Halifax regional council Tuesday, municipal staff recommend going forward with cuts to afternoon, evening and weekend ferry service.
The cuts, approved by council with the 2012-13 budget, would see the last ferry depart from Halifax for Alderney Landing at 10:15 p.m. every day.
Metro Transit would also reduce service to every 30 minutes between noon and 2 p.m. on weekdays, and remove service before 11:30 a.m. on Sundays. Two early morning trips from Woodside would also be chopped.
Collectively, the cuts would save Metro Transit approximately $423,700 a year.
The service was given a temporary reprieve in May, when councillors voted 18-5 to ask staff to come up with other options. That staff are still recommending scaling back service angers Dartmouth Coun. Gloria McCluskey.
“It’s so short sighted I can’t believe it,” McCluskey said Monday. “We’re going to have so many more people living in Dartmouth, and to be cutting the ferry, and also when (the Macdonald) bridge, all the renovations or changes to the bridge, we need the ferry even so much more.”
Staff did provide options for continuing the service as is – but with a fare or tax increase to cover Metro Transit’s shortfall. McCluskey ruled both of those options out.
“I think that the ferries should keep running the way that they are, however they do that, (but) no tax increase no fare increase,” McCluskey said.
“We had hoped they’d come back with something like that … but they came back with nothing.” — Metro Halifax
