Public Works Secretary Kim Masland is changing attitudes toward information being published about the ferry service between Yarmouth, North Carolina, and Bar Harbor, Maine.
On Thursday, Masland told reporters that the number of passengers for the service will not be made public until the end of the season in October.
But in a statement Friday afternoon, Masland said her department would publish the number of passengers so far and that regular updates would continue.
Figures show that the ferry has carried 2,888 passengers since the start of the service four days a week on May 19 (1,661 arriving in Yarmouth; 1,227 departing). There were also 1,323 vehicles (762 arriving in Yarmouth; 561 leaving) in what is considered shoulder season.
Last week, service provider Bay Ferries announced it had sold about 15,100 tickets for the season so far.
The company declined to provide figures: Masland
In a statement Friday, Masland said she decided to make the figures available to the public after her department asked Bay Ferries to publish the daily number of passengers on its website – and the company declined.
“Our government strongly believes that Bay Ferries owes it to the people of Nova Scotia to be completely transparent about how the service is presented,” Masland said in a statement. “If Bay Ferries isn’t going to be completely transparent, we certainly will be.”
However, Bay Ferries officials say transparency is not an issue for them.
Bay Ferries offers a different account
The company said in a press release shortly after Masland’s statement on Friday that the first request from the government for passenger data was received at 20:30 on Thursday. Bay Ferries said it provided the information “a few minutes later”.
The company said it had expressed concerns about the publication of daily information, as the season started earlier than traditional, and at a time when it is trying to generate interest, “it does not want the data from the beginning of the season to be misinterpreted as indicative for the general outlook, given the amount of investment in the service. “
Despite its concerns, the company says it has told government officials that “if shorter-term reporting of actual passenger and vehicle vehicles is a priority, we will work with your department to develop a reporting structure that meets that need. in some reasonable way. “
Masland told CBC News that her department is determining how it will continue to share passenger information with the public.
An ongoing saga
The apparent dispute over the disclosure of passenger numbers is another chapter in the ongoing controversy over transparency with Bay Ferries and the contract with the provincial government. When in opposition, the Tories aggressively insisted on transparency about the service, making it a distinctive issue.
Prime Minister Tim Houston, while the opposition leader, successfully sued the government to gain access to the annual management fee paid to Bay Ferries. The company said it paid about $ 1.17 million a year in 2021 to operate the high-speed ferry.
When the former Liberal government did not disclose passenger numbers, the Tories also raised the issue. A well-known local Tory volunteer in Yarmouth could be seen counting cars regularly as they got off the ferry, and those numbers would later end up in Houston’s Twitter account.
In government, however, Masland and Houston expressed less of a fighting tone on the ferry. They have repeatedly said that there is a contract, that they will abide by it and hope that the service will be as successful as possible.
To hope for tourism
After a three-year hiatus, there are high hopes for what the service could mean for the tourist season in southwestern Nova Scotia and the rest of the countryside. The service has been down for the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a year earlier, as the facilities at the new port of Bar Harbor were not ready.
The service starts daily on June 23. The peak season, considered July and August, is the time when most bookings occur historically. The transitions are reduced to six days a week in September and the season ends in early October.
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