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If you’re having trouble placing a last-minute reservation with BC Ferries, a local software developer may have just the right tool for you.
Vancouver Island resident Vadran Budimcic used his coding skills to develop a text message system called NextSailing.ca, which sends alerts when a reservation opens up on a sold-out route.
Budimcic said he developed the tool after his wife consistently had trouble booking a ferry at a specific time.
“It took me about an hour and I built a really quick and dirty solution that would just run on my laptop and it would just check the ferry schedule on the routes my wife was interested in and it would text me if the ferry was available,” he said.
“And after it had been running on its own for about a day, it texted me and I bought the ticket.”
Budimcic had originally intended the system for personal use only, but said his wife convinced him to open it to the public.
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He said it took about 30 hours to build the tool into something the public could use.
The result is a website where users can enter one or more days and specific sailing times and receive a text message when a slot becomes available.
So far, about 2,000 people have visited the site, and about 300 have entered their phone numbers. Budimcic said about 80 to 90 percent of those people have received a text message.
“People are just used to going to the ferry website and looking for the reservation in a refreshing and refreshing way. There is a lot of demand,” he says.
“There’s just no good alternative… to manually refreshing the page.”
BC Ferries spokesperson Liza Yuzda called the tool “interesting,” but said it was too early to say whether the company would be interested in implementing something similar.
“We are constantly looking at new ways to improve our technologies and our approach to making travel as smooth as possible,” she said.
Yuzda said that in the meantime, BC Ferries has rolled out a variety of new technologies aimed at improving people’s travel experience.
This includes a BC Ferries app that manages personal travel information and sends service alerts, and more webcams at terminals so passengers can see conditions on the ground.
Budimcic’s Next Sailing service is free, but because there are small costs associated with hosting the site and sending the text messages, he accepts donations.
Right now, the tool only works for people traveling in regular-sized vehicles, but he said he plans to expand it to larger vehicles as well.
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