Puget Sound foot ferries migrate to San Francisco
The Bay Area makes use of our former foot ferries, and then some, all paid for by tolls.
One of the best ways to get around metropolitan regions without a car ... is on the water. And you need not own a boat yourself. In the San Francisco Bay Area, there's an extensive network of passenger-only ferries — they carry people, but not cars. The Bay Area Water Emergency Transit Authority promotes a combined 14 commuter and leisure routes, and is considering more. WETA was created in 2004 to consolidate several longstanding passenger-only ferry routes in the Bay Area, and coordinate emergency response for all. As the "emergency" in the agency's name implies, one focus is being prepared to deploy foot ferries to connect people and places in case of a natural disaster such as an earthquake, or a terrorist attack. Either could decommission roads, bridges and highways. But WETA's main charge is regional daily water transit.
To update the Bay Area's foot-ferry fleet, the agency recently took delivery of a new, $8.8 million, 149-passenger twin-hulled catamaran constructed by Nichols Brothers Boat Builders of Freeland, Wash., — on Whidbey Island, right here in our very own Puget Sound. The company has built 41 similar vessels since 1982, but the latest iteration is state of the art, as the South Whidbey Island Record reports. Nichols Brothers is already building a second model for WETA, one of three more boats the agency has ordered to date and expects to have running this year.
WETA hopes to have 10 new boats operating by 2025. Fleet expansion and replacement takes foresight and finance. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, the new vessels are financed by a one-dollar hike in Bay Area bridge tolls, which was implemented at the beginning of 2007. The Gemini, which also carries up to 34 bicycles, will initially run between San Francisco and the East Bay.
Meanwhile, the other foot-ferry agency in the Bay Area, which also operates the Golden Gate Bridge, has bought for $4 million two late-90s vintage high speed passenger-only vessels from Washington State Ferries. The boats will run between San Francisco, and Larkspur and Sausalito. They were used on the Bremerton-Seattle passenger-only route, which was discontinued because of lawsuits from waterfront homeowners in narrow Rich Passage who contended the voluminous wakes from the boats caused shoreline erosion. That is not expected to be an issue in the more open waters of the Bay Area.
WSF, which continues to operate a badly aging and fiscally-strapped system of car ferries, gradually got out of the foot-ferry business (it also operated the Vashon Island-Seattle route) after passage of I-695 in 1999 cut car license tab fees used for funding.
Foot ferries remain in Puget Sound, though. King County has created a foot ferry district — funded by a portion of the property tax — to operate the Vashon-Seattle route, the West Seattle Water Taxi and several demonstration routes that could become permanent, depending on ridership. Bremerton and Kitsap County will test a new low-wake high-speed foot ferry on the Bremerton-Seattle route. The Port of Kingston plans a Kingston-Seattle route. San Juan and Whatcom counties are exploring a Friday Harbor-Bellingham run. Securing full funding is still an issue in each of these last three instances, and shoreline impact challenges remain pressing for Bremerton-Seattle, as Kitsap Transit's Executive Director Dick Hayes writes in the Kitsap Sun.Compared to the unified approach of the Bay Area, the future for Western Washington foot ferries looks pretty uncertain, and pronouncedly ad hoc. But some sort of unifying regional agreement with additional funding provisions is worth further discussion. This approach could better allow current and future operators to develop — to some degree — shared facilities, equipment, promotion, and management.
In metro Vancouver, B.C., a company named Coast Mountain Bus operates, for the regional transit agency TransLink, the SeaBus passenger-only ferry service. Two double-ended 400-passenger catamarans run across scenic Burrard Inlet (one is pictured above) from Waterfront Station in downtown Vancouver to Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver, a community connected to Vancouver and the mainland by the local road and bridge network. Trip time is 12 minutes. A variety of direct transit connections are available at both ends — a bus network in North Vancouver, including routes to Grouse Mountain and the Capilano Suspension Bridge; and at Waterfront Station, direct connections to light rail, commuter rail, and buses. Two boats, the Burrard Otter and the Burrard Beaver, ply the route. But they are each 30 years old and require maintenance often enough for TransLink to purchase a new third boat to keep schedules on track during repairs and then expand service frequency in 2010.
Other foot-ferry operators are seeking a foothold in the market as well. A new private service named Coastal Link Ferries connects the bedroom community of Bowen Island — a long stone's throw west across the water from Metro Vancouver — to the central city, currently landing at a less transit-convenient dock downtown at Coal Harbor. The company has so far been stymied in attempts to lease a vacant berth at TransLink's more transit-friendly downtown SeaBus landing (at Waterfront Station), North Shore news reports. Coastal Link says access to the berth there is key to plans for service that it hopes to offer between downtown and the densely-populated community of West Vancouver, just northwest of the city.
Comments:
Posted Mon, Jan 12, 6:21 a.m. inappropriate
The irony of the sale of the Chinook and Snohomish, the passenger-only ferries at issue, by Washington State Ferries is that during the sale process, WSF scrambled all over the place to lease, at top-dollar rates, POFs to cover runs since it hasn't enough auto ferries to go around.
When the Walla Walla crapped out on the Edmonds-Kingston run and was replaced by an auto ferry off Seattle-Bremerton (it's always that run that gets first abuse), WSF was paying a private operator some $15 thousand per day.
Aware that the Steilacoom II, which poorly covers Port Townsend-Keystone, had to be dry-docked for mandatory USCG inspections, which it is now, WSF had to make POF arrangements. Ferry service on the run is now cancelled so ofte that "we apologize for any inconvenience" is now the unofficialo WSF motto.
Gov. Christine Gregoire had it in her power to stop the sale, but she didn't. And WSF director, David Moseley, could have raised a red flag saying that the two vessels could have been used for increasing stop-gap coverage rather than paying through the nose to lease boats, but he didn't.
Seems ferry madness often goes without official comment while ferry officials ignore comment on the madness from others. But, what else can you expect from government?
The Piper
Posted Mon, Jan 12, 7:51 a.m. inappropriate
Great article Matt,
Foot ferries are efficient. It should be obvious that moving a person across the water is less expensive than moving a person plus their automobile. Foot ferries add a whole lot that you don't get from other modes of mass transit; tourism, cultural icon, disaster planning, construction mitigation, and enhanced walkable communities, to name a few.
The clear lesson from San Francisco, Vancouver and elsewhere is that leadership needs to come from the state government. Without that crucial element foot ferry efforts in Puget Sound will continue to be weak and uncoordinated.
My vote for state leadership would be to have Washington State Ferries get back in the business, with 10% of spending for foot ferries. That would be a welcome change from the current policy of running a car-centric hub-and-choke ferry system. However,there are lots of other things the state could do, some that don't cost any money. For one, the state could pass a law creating a "Puget Sound Water Emergency Transportation Authority" and have that new advisory body replace the Washington Transportation Committee role for oversight of ferry policy. That would be a good starting point.
Note that foot ferries don't have to be a money pit. The Port of Kingston is moving forward with their plan for 100% farebox recovery of operatinog costs. The Port is currently looking at a couple used ferries. The key missing ingrediant in their plan is $900k of operating subsidy over the first 3 years to get things going. State funding looks bleak this year, but there are other grant options being pursued. I think its likely the new Port of Kingston Water Transit Service will start operating sometime this summer or fall.
Best, Nels
Posted Mon, Jan 12, 2 p.m. inappropriate
Show me the multi part of the multi-modal transit and I'll show you some foot ferries. We need rapid connections once those foot ferries dock.
Posted Mon, Jan 12, 4:05 p.m. inappropriate
If we're talking about the politically impossible, how about a fossil fuel tax? Make the cost of energy higher, and people will seek permanent alternatives. Right now, the certainty of higher costs is obscured by market volatility to the benefit of speculators. We would see a much more friendly investment environment for alternatives as a result.