Farmers, truckers and tourists continue to fight bumpy roads along a 160 kilometre detour as the Riverhurst, Sask., ferry remained out of commission last week.
Lorne Sheppard, councillor for the Rural Municipality of Canaan in central Saskatchewan, said the Riverhurst ferry, the province’s second busiest, has provided intermittent service since it was refitted three years ago.
The boat carries many farm families, grain and equipment across Lake Diefenbaker and forms part of the region’s primary highway system.
Among the numerous repairs and modifications, a new drive system was installed on the cable powered boat.
Read Also
U.S. loses out on sales of soybean to China
U.S. soybean exporters risk missing out on billions of dollars worth of sales to China this year as trade talks drag on and buyers in the top oilseed importer lock in cargoes from Brazil.
During that refit a British Columbia firm changed the drive to a double pulley system adding stability to allow the ferry to carry additional weight.
The ferry hauls more transport trucks than any other in the province, making up 6.3 percent of its average daily traffic of 127 vehicles.
Sheppard said the refit work was fraught with problems that reduced service in 2005.
Before the changes the ferry could be counted on to run its scheduled hours 97 percent of the time. In 2005, that dropped to 89 percent, said Doug Wakabayashi of Saskatchewan Highways, the vessel’s owner and operator.
Sheppard said the government should have been better informed before assigning the work.
“You do your homework before you start doing this.”
Wakabayashi said the work is specialized and takes significant marine engineering services.
An Ontario company was hired last fall to fix the troubled drive system and switch to a hydraulically driven pulley system. It was unable to finish because of other work commitments so the area was without ferry service until May and then only sporadically due to broken cables and other problems.
The system failed completely May 29.
Since then the government department has replaced the passenger service with a combination of tourist tour boat and van service to Lucky Lake and Riverhurst.
“We are also looking at options to haul the ferry across the lake with other boats or land-based winches, but we expect it will be fixed before we need to implement some other system,” he said. The drive was shipped to Ontario for repairs and was expected to be installed early next week.
The ferry is the province’s largest of the 12 the government operates and the only one located on a primary highway.
