When passengers board a ferry, they can expect to have a relatively carefree experience while in transit. When the crew and captain alight, they have a careful, dutiful one. Making a profit on the trip is only possible for the owner/operator once the costs of duty and care – including all-consuming regulatory compliance – are subtracted. That makes turning such a profit difficult.
In fact, over the last two decades, the areas of regulation for ferries – such as safety, environmental impacts, security, public health and the workplace – have only increased and widened, even as the economic regulation of ferries (that is, government regulation of their tariffs and schedules) has waned.
Ferry services are manifestly common carriers charged with a public trust, especially if operated by a government entity. Whether or not a ferry owner respects the public good, that person or entity is bound by the framework of risk and rules, which constantly evolves. All the more so, in 2013, the regulatory horizon is expansive and formidable. Without question, the biggest trend in regulation is more regulation.
“Not wishing to sound cynical,” says Stephen Tuckwell, director of communications and port operations, Brittany Ferries, UK (operating in four countries), “the unmistakable trend is that we are expected to undertake increasing work on behalf of national authorities without any compensation.”
Similar pressures are also being felt at Color Line, a service mainly connecting Norway and Germany. “The overall trend is that new regulations are appearing in more areas, both from the European Union (EU) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), than we are used to,” says Helge Otto Mathisen, vice-president, communications and public affairs. “Especially regulations concerning climate gas emissions, but also in such fields as manning, taxation and safety.”
Operators begin with the regulations of the single country or domain in which their service may principally or exclusively operate. Then, if the service is international, the operator must also abide by the conventions of the IMO, which is charged with ensuring international passengers’ safety and security. Many countries not only base their regulations on IMO standards; they often adopt them as whole cloth to govern their domestic operations.
Conversely, however, the IMO’s dominant, standardising role poses a problem for larger, domestic concerns such as Canada’s British Columbia Ferries (BCF). That is because ferry lines provide services that are quite different from those offered by other types of passenger shipping or marine firms. “Of general concern to us,” says Mark Wilson, BCF’s vice-president of engineering, “is the lack of appreciation at IMO and supporting bodies, when setting standards and goals for the broader marine trade, regarding the limitations of (very) short domestic sea operations like ours, with an average crossing time on our routes of less than two hours.”
As in years past, this year’s regulatory environment covers a dizzying array of procedures and equipment. It also mandates a formidable schedule of regular inspections over a vessel’s life. The rules predictably address an increasingly wide range of areas besides safety, environmental impact (mainly air-polluting emissions, but also waste management), security, public health and the workplace. These include manning, training, vessel design, construction, repairs and general operations.
General operations may seem like an area unlikely to be subject to obscure risk and costly adaptation – but it can be. For example, in May, responding to a wave of new scrutiny of the cruise industry by US lawmakers and consumers, the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) adopted an International Cruise Passengers’ Bill of Rights. CLIA’s multi-pronged initiative aimed to improve passenger health, comfort, safety and security.
But, unfortunately for the ferry business, CLIA requested that the IMO apply the bill to the entire global maritime industry. As one consequence for Brittany Ferries, says Tuckwell, “new passenger rights of various kinds present a challenge – not so much in terms of compensation for delays but, for example, because we need to risk-assess every vessel for the carriage of disabled passengers. This has caused us to modify our procedures and limit the number of disabled passengers per departure.”
First and foremost among the purposes of regulation is maintaining safety. Still, accidents can and do happen, and so enforcement in this area remains vigorous, especially in and around North American coasts, thanks to the United States Coast Guard (USCG). Besides patrolling, the USCG certifies vessels and conducts annual vessel inspections. It also enforces laws and regulations related to minimum crewing levels, vessel crews’ licensing, security threats and countries of origin.
The inspections confirm the readiness or fitness of a boat’s stability, its hulls, propulsion systems, steering systems, electrical systems, lifesaving equipment and procedures, firefighting and fire prevention systems, and suite of navigation and communications gear.
As never before, safety regulation also ensures that accidents are competently investigated and the lessons so derived disseminated and applied among operators and regulators – the point being to fortify prevention and refine or codify future responses.
That effort has taken on special importance and urgency in recent years, thanks to certain high-profile passenger shipping accidents. Some of these entailed both great damage and numerous casualties – such as the Costa Concordia’s grounding in early 2012.
Luckily, the impact of new rules developed pursuant to that incident has been rather moderate on ferry concerns. In the case of BCF, for example, there has been an impact on their training procedures alone: “At the time of the Costa Concordia,” says Wilson, “BCF already employed the most modern mass evacuation technology available; so, in our case, the new rules will likely only impact our training process.”
For ferries somewhat behind the curve on evacuation technology, there are more general lessons: “There is simply no doubt that we have to learn from each and every tragedy,” says Arnaud Le Poulichet, Brittany Ferries’ technical director. “The safety of our passengers comes first. We already have extremely high standards, but we must never be so complacent as to stop raising them – we must always seek ways to improve safety for all types of passengers and crew.”
This is an abridged version of an article that appeared in the Autumn/Winter 2013 edition of International Cruise & Ferry Review. To read the full article, you can subscribe to the magazine in printed or digital formats.