BC Ferries cut the fuel surtax on fares in December and announced its jumping into the holiday spirit by offering great deals on hotel-travel packages between Victoria and Metro Vancouver.

But BC Ferries is still acting like Scrooge in regards to the unusually exorbitant fares it charges Metro Vancouver and Southern Gulf Island residents who travel back and forth.

Residents of Metro Vancouver pay about three times more than Victoria residents for a return trip to the Gulf Islands.

The startling inequality in the cost of travel to the Gulf Islands is yet another puzzling piece of what some are calling the community-harming behaviour of BC Ferries, which the Vancouver Suns Stephen Hume has been recounting in a series of 2014 columns.

The increasingly imbalanced ferry costs, which greatly reduce the likelihood that many of Metros 2.4 million residents will make their way to the Gulf Islands, help explain why restaurants, stores and bed and breakfasts on Galiano, Mayne, Pender and Saturna islands are suffering.

This is how the payment disparity hits the people who would travel back and forth between Metro Vancouver and these four Gulf Islands:

The cost of a typical peak return trip, with car and driver, from Tsawwassen terminal to any of these four Gulf Islands is about $135.

The cost of a typical peak weekend return trip from the Swartz Bay terminal on Vancouver Island to these same Gulf Islands is just $52.

Whats more, with Experience Card discounts, Victoria residents who take the Swartz Bay route to any of these Gulf Islands can do the return trip for as low as $32. Students can often travel for free.

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Douglas Todd: No holiday cheer for Metro ferry travellers to Gulf Islands