By Frank on January 7, 2009
Foot ferries are cool and all, but is a time of record budget shortages really the right time to be launching a King County passenger ferry service?
It seems so… 2006.
I realize council levied a property tax just for this purpose, but maybe they ought to rethink it now that all county staff are taking forced furloughs.
Posted in Bus Stop, i405
By Frank on May 2, 2008
The Pt. Townsent chamber has a fever*, and the only cure is more passenger ferry:
The $100,000 the chamber is willing to chip in was initially earmarked to help fund passenger-only ferry service during the Hood Canal Bridge closure, scheduled for spring 2009. Caldwell, however, said the service could start much earlier and become permanent if a private boat operator can forge agreements with local merchants and if the city or the state is willing to match the chamber’s contribution.
Companies that might be interested in operating the service include Port Townsend’s Puget Sound Express and Clipper Navigation, the company that operates the high-speed Victoria Clipper between Seattle and Vancouver Island.
“We can start this service long before the bridge closes,” Caldwell said. “There is a boat available now.”
*See here if you don’t get the reference.
Posted in Bus Stop, ifyoubuildit
By serial catowner on February 14, 2008
Thirty years ago I considered buying an old passenger ferry that, in her day, was notorious for speed in carrying workers from West Seattle to Bremerton. She was 80 feet long, 12 feet wide, and, when I saw her, powered by one flathead Chrysler straight-eight, the same motor Chrysler used in their automobiles in the late forties and early fifties.
Moving passengers by water quickly will never be as efficient as rail, but water has a few advantages, first, that it is flat, and secondly, that it is free. Except for the terminals, you don’t condemn and buy property to set up a route on water, and each terminal can serve many routes.
Bruce Agnew has offered an excellent precis view here and I have critiqued Brewster’s response in a comment to Frank’s post, below. What I offer here is a tale of two cities.
In Bremerton, Cary Brozeman has led efforts to revitalize downtown Bremerton by replacing ferry parking with condominiums and commercial development, along with a stunning esplanade well worth a day trip from Seattle to admire, and a subway tunnel for cars and trucks exiting the ferry to pass under the city center before emerging on the surface. When the ferry arrives in the afternoon, a dozen buses swallow the foot passengers and carry them away. The Naval Shipyard, with less success in ameliorating traffic, also subsidizes bus service for their workers.
Bainbridge, while equally successful in developing dense foot-and-transit friendly housing, and picking up foot passengers with buses, has suffered from the WSDOT policy of dumping car and truck traffic from the ferry on local roads. In a car exiting the ferry in the afternoon, it takes as long to get from Bainbridge to Poulsbo as it did to cross the Sound, not too impressive when we consider that the distances are the same. Bainbridge and Kingston are suffering, and know they are suffering, from the cars and trucks dumped on them by WSDOT.
Yes, in the past our regional governances have been divided and conquered by savvy power brokers and their tools at WSDOT. It’s time to change all of that.
Posted in addictive, automobiles, Bus Stop, cars, System Map
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