Valuing the quality of strategic ferry services to remote communities

Abstract

Ferry service quality is important to the economic and social prosperity of remote island and coastal communities. This paper shows how users value the quality attributes of ferry routes serving long distance traffic. It therefore adds to the thin evidence base on willingness to pay values for changes in ferry frequency and operating hours of strategic routes with low frequencies and limited hours of operation. An important finding, from a ferry management perspective, is that the quality of the ferry service matters to users. The value of increasing the operating day and reducing headways for ferry services of a strategic nature is positive. Ensuring the operating day is of a similar length to the working day is more important to users than extending the service into the evening or night. Users also do not seem to value headways below 3h. Given an environment of fiscal constraints and falling subsidy levels, ferry operators in remote regions should in the first instance maintain the operating day and reduce frequencies — should headways already be lower than 3h. If there is a need to reduce the operating day ideally it should not be reduced below that of the working day.