For a long time, Nanaimo’s great white whale – the politicians' solution to all their economic problems – has been a foot passenger ferry to Vancouver. Read the Nanaimo paper for a month, and you’ll see it mentioned again and again.

Well, apparently another attempt to launch the service is close to happening. From the Nanaimo Daily News:

Mayor John Ruttan said the success of the project will depend on ensuring that the tens of thousands people expected to visit the hotel each year have a convenient, quick way to travel to the city, and said a proposed fast ferry foot passenger service between Nanaimo and Vancouver could fit the bill.

"I'm just saying it would be a great asset to the conference centre hotel to have that service," he said, adding there is still some time to establish a service before the hotel is built. Nanaimo Economic Development Corporation CEO Sasha Angus said ferry proponents are in the final stages of financial due diligence with two different Chinese investors. Two ferries have also been secured, he added.

Of course, there’s no talk of the most significant hurdle: getting BC Ferries to approve their competition (as their legislation allows them to do), something they have been loathe to do. Check out this piece by Vaughn Palmer last year – featuring an interview with then-Ferries boss David Hahn:

"I don't think it ever was going to happen," Hahn told me during an interview on Voice of B.C. on Shaw TV this week.

"I never saw it personally." Nor did the man who presided over the corporation for most of the past nine years make it easy on would-be bidders for ferry services.

From the outset, he set some tough conditions.

"One, you have to be financially viable - meaning your balance sheet has to be willing to stand up in front of ours, so that we're not absorbing or underwriting the risk of letting you do this. And two, you have to have experience to be able to do this and take it on."

There were few takers: "Very few people were experienced enough to do this. If you look at ferry operations around the world, they're in sad shape right now. If there's real money to be made, people would be going after this business and everything else."

I reminded him of that case where a private company did start a passengers-only service out of Nanaimo to downtown Vancouver, only to go out of business when its lone vessel blew an engine.

Wasn't one of the obstacles for would-be competitors the lack of any backup vessels, while the ferry corporation had an entire fleet?

"We have, again, that advantage," he conceded. "But we have the disadvantage of the minor routes, where you lose money. ... If this were a great business, you'd have competitors knocking at the door. They'd be leaping through all sorts of hoops to take over these contracted routes."

The gall of Hahn suggesting private companies’ books should “stand up” to BC Ferries’ heavily subsidized operation is mind-boggling. But one wonders if Nanaimo’s newest ferry service will be sunk by BC Ferries before it even starts.