This is basically a meme at this point. Like, this is the fifth attempt at a passenger ferry from Downtown Vancouver to Downtown Nanaimo since BC Ferries took over the bulk of ferry operations in BC.
And I'm just thinking, like — yeah, building a fixed link from the Lower Mainland to Vancouver Island would be incredibly expensive, but we should just do it at this point. Put in a four track rail tunnel to replace the Horseshoe Bay/Departure Bay and Tsawwassen/Swartz Bay routes; run a mix of car/truck trains and passenger trains from various points in the Lower Mainland to various points on the Island. Let people board a train at Waterfront or Pacific Central that hooks up to whatever parts of the E&N get reactivated eventually.
(A road link would be less of a hassle on the infrastructural end on the Island side, given the current absence of active rail networks there, but we shouldn't really be encouraging needless car capacity.)
