My Passenger Ferry Wish List

[ruddernut]

The following are some passenger only ferry services I would like to see implemented over the coming years, to reduce car usage and sailings of the large auto ferries:

• Gibsons-Bowen Island-Ambleside-Vancouver preferably operated by Translink.
  
• Nanaimo-Vancouver downtown to downtown
  
• Victoria-Sidney-Ganges-Vancouver downtown to downtown
  
• Gulf Island Circulator connecting Saltspring, Galiano, Mayne, Pender and Saturna Islands, timed to connect with the above Victoria-Vancouver ferry at Ganges, making it the transportation hub and town centre for the Southern Gulf Islands region.
  

[FNS]

Great concepts, "ruddernut"!

Another idea is to run DMU trains between Whistler, Squamish, Horseshoe Bay, and North Vancouver. A station at HB would require cutting out a hole into the side of the railway tunnel and creating an inside platform deck. Exhaust blowers would be installed at each end of the railway tunnel, bringing fresh air into the passenger platform and exhaust out the tunnel ends. The platform would be connected directly to the BCF foot passenger waiting lounge, providing easy foot passenger direct links to 2010 events from the Langdale, Bowen Island, and Nanaimo ferries.

Another idea is to unretire the Pacificats and run them between Vancouver, Horseshoe Bay, and Squamish. Their Main Decks would be used by tour buses and VIP vehicles on direct trips to and from the 2010 events in Whistler from a temporary vehicle slip next to the SkyTrain Waterfront Station in Vancouver. Double deck the Squamish terminal and allow regular cars onto the upper deck to go between HB and Squamish whenever there is a mudslide on the Squamish Highway. Guaranteed passenger and vehicle transportation would then be on the menu to get to and from the 2010 events in Whistler, mudslides or not.

My ideas.

[ruddernut]

May 6, 2008 10:46:48 GMT -8 FNS said:

Great concepts, "ruddernut"!

Another idea is to run DMU trains between Whistler, Squamish, Horseshoe Bay, and North Vancouver. A station at HB would require cutting out a hole into the side of the railway tunnel and creating an inside platform deck. Exhaust blowers would be installed at each end of the railway tunnel, bringing fresh air into the passenger platform and exhaust out the tunnel ends. The platform would be connected directly to the BCF foot passenger waiting lounge, providing easy foot passenger direct links to 2010 events from the Langdale, Bowen Island, and Nanaimo ferries.

I too have wished for the return of basic passenger rail service to Whistler.

Unfortunately, I hear they plan to temporarily close the rail line to turn the section of it at Porteau Cove into an extra lane for the Sea-to-Sky Highway during the Olympics.

[ruddernut]

Here is a map I made for this passenger ferry network.


Red - Victoria-Vancouver
Blue - Nanaimo-Vancouver
Green - Gibsons-Vancouver
Purple - Belcarra-Deep Cove-Vancouver
Orange - Mayne-Galiano-Saturna-Pender Circulator
Black - Ganges-Pender Shuttle

I made a couple of changes to it.

Instead of having the Vic-Van ferry stop at Ganges, I moved the Gulf Island stop to Pender Island instead, since Ganges is too far off course. From Pender, passengers can transfer to the Ganges-Pender Shuttle or the Mayne-Galiano-Saturna-Pender Circulator.

I also added a Belcarra-Deep Cove-Vancouver route and a stop at the tip of the southern spit of Iona Island where a shuttle bus would connect to YVR for Victoria-Vancouver.

[Nucksrule]

These are great ideas, ruddernut. What about access from Nanaimo to Victoria? Maybe it could be another connection to pender?

[Quatchi]

Thats what the bus is for!

Cheers,

[Low Light Mike]

Here's a Halifax news story, re fast passenger ferries. I was looking for a place to post this, and thought perhaps this was ok, as there is existing discussion of pax ferries on our west coast..... so this east coast news might be relevant for comparison purposes.
------------------------------------

www.thechronicleherald.ca:80/Front/1068021.html
(and there are a bunch of reader comments on the website too, so check the weblink for that: comments are at bottom of story)

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Halifax ferry tale is for real
City puts out tenders for building two fast commuter boats
By AMY PUGSLEY FRASER City Hall Reporter
Thu. Jul 17 - 12:07 PM

Halifax city hall is going full speed ahead with its Bedford fast ferries.

On Wednesday, the city issued a tender for expressions of interest from qualified "Canadian and non-Canadian" firms to design, build and deliver at least two fast ferries.

The wheelchair-accessible vessels would carry as many as 250 passengers on a 12-kilometre run from Mill Cove to downtown Halifax and back. They would also have a bike rack for up to a dozen bicycles.

Bedford councillor Tim Outhit said he’s excited about the project because it would get cars off the road and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"It’s great," he said Wednesday. "But my only concern is that we have good connections to and from the terminal because I don’t want the Bedford Basin waterfront turned into a parking lot or the Bedford Highway turned into gridlock like after the fireworks."

Two years ago, the city commissioned a study on the fast-ferry proposal and received a few recommendations about pursuing the project. Among them were that the ferries should travel at a speed of 65 kilometres per hour to make the trip in about 15 minutes and that they should have a capacity of 350 passengers to make sure the service would be cost-effective.

But Wednesday’s tender calls for vessels that would hold 250 passengers and travel at about 50 km/h.

Those differences were enough for Coun. Sheila Fougere (Connaught-Quinpool) to throttle back on her support for the plan.

Ms. Fougere, who is running against Mayor Peter Kelly for the top job in the October municipal election, said Wednesday there isn’t a good business case for a 250-passenger ferry.

"The facts are altered from the original cultivation study that we were given," she said.

If the city pushes for a 250-seat ferry, then the routes would be subsidized, "as all Metro Transit routes are anyway," she said.

But the original study had information on the break-even point in terms of numbers of passengers, fare costs and trip times, she said.

"And those facts were the basis for supporting a business case for the fast ferry, and now those facts are not the same."

The city’s transportation manager said Wednesday that starting with smaller boats would be cheaper and more prudent.

"We weren’t comfortable taking the risk of building the large ferries," David McCusker said in an interview from city hall.

"We’d rather start at a moderate size. And if the demand is there to fill a lot of seats, we can add more ferries."

The city’s intent is to have the service operational late in 2010, Mr. McCusker said.

"But to do that, we need to start moving on procuring the ferries and establishing the sites."

To facilitate that, a "good portion" of the project’s expected $27-million price tag, about $14 million, was included in the 2008-09 fiscal year, Mr. McCusker said. Thinking about the ferry service while the price of oil keeps climbing is not a concern, he said.

"As fuel costs go up, our operating cost goes up, but so does our demand.

"We compete with automobile trips, and they go up much higher than our transit trips do. So when fuel goes up, we become more competitive."

Mr. Kelly is a booster of the fast-ferry project but stopped short of saying that issuing the tender is a big step forward.

"It’s only to see who out there might be interested in responding to an official call," he said.

The mayor also deflected a question about whether the fast ferries would primarily benefit residents of his hometown of Bedford by saying they would help many commuters all over Halifax Regional Municipality.

"People perceive it to be a Bedford fast ferry, but it’s not," he said.

"In time, it will evolve to many communities, not just one."

He mentioned Dartmouth, Shannon Park, Woodside, Eastern Passage, Rockingham and Purcells Cove as other potential destinations.

( [e-mail])
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[Northern Exploration]

Halifax in many ways is similar to Vancouver in that it has people who live and work across a body of water. The bridges can only handle a certain amount of traffic. And that traffic is held captive by any accidents or closures. I think Canada has been behind the curve on this type of tranport and with sky high gas prices and the need to get emissions down, we need to play some catch up.

As I said in another post, someone in Toronto has proposed a high speed water taxi service along the lake. The wave action on the lake is unique and on windy days the it can be surprizing strong, and would be abeam the whole route. With gridlock on the freeways and a commuter rail system prone to delays since they are not on dedicated track, and the expense of digging new subway tunnels, something has to happen. Unfortunately Torontonians don't think about the water as a transit route like people in Halifax and Vancouver do. The Seabus and similar Halifax ferries have done that for those two cities. Now those cities should do more to get people off the roads.

[Low Light Mike]

Just reviving this old thread to mention that there's an interesting discussion ongoing at the SkyScraper.com forum, in response to a recent Vancouver Sun article.

forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=184106


New WCFF member "Allan Kuan" is participating in that other-forum discussion.

[Low Light Mike]

More talk about pax-only ferries...

from a Seattle blog? Crosscut.

Are passenger-only ferries on the way back?

A new Kingston-Seattle service is coming and other ideas are following, giving rise to the thought of a resurrected Mosquito Fleet on Puget Sound.


By C.B. Hall
August 17, 2010.

Passenger-only ferry service on Puget Sound continues to make a comeback, with the announcement of a proposed schedule for a Kingston-Seattle foot ferry, and more car-free possibilities on routes as far north as the San Juan Islands.

Could Washington State see a return to the era of the “Mosquito Fleet,” the swarm of passenger-only steamers that covered the Sound before the automobile pushed pedestrian travel aside?

In Kingston the answer appears to be yes. Scheduled to begin service in mid-October, the Kingston-to-Seattle SoundRunner will join two other passenger-only routes on Puget Sound: Kitsap Transit's Port Orchard-Bremerton-Annapolis service and the King County water taxi, which ferries people from West Seattle to the downtown waterfront. Interest in the expansion of car-free service is widespread, and more foot ferries are likely to join the roster in years ahead.

The Port of Kingston is seeking public feedback on its draft schedule, which calls for the Spirit of Kingston to make two morning and two afternoon rush-hour round-trips, weekdays only, between the north Kitsap community and Seattle's Colman Dock. The ship will cover the 20-mile crossing in 45 minutes, cruising at 25 knots, or about 29 miles an hour. The round-trip adult fare will be $15.

Kingston purchased two craft for SoundRunner last March. While the Spirit covers the commuter run between Kingston and Seattle, the Victoria Express will serve as a backup vessel. Both ships will be available for charters when not in scheduled service. The ferry will call at the port's own dock in Kingston; the nearby Washington State Ferries dock cannot accommodate the port's ships, which are far smaller than the big car ferries that the state operates.

The Port of Kingston received $3.5 million in federal funding to purchase the ships and ready them for service but anticipates operating them without a subsidy, according to ferry program manager Eric Osnes. Passenger fares and charter income will cover the bills, he expects. By comparison, the state's car ferries recover only 65% of their expenses through fares.

“Pretty remarkable — the little port that could,” Bruce Agnew said of Kingston's low-budget startup. “It's the model for the rest of the Sound.” Agnew is a prominent foot-ferry backer and the director of Seattle's Cascadia Center, a transportation policy think tank.

The port will seek to avoid the fate of Aqua Express, which operated a passenger-only Kingston-Seattle ferry for nine months in 2005. It suffered a death of a thousand cuts: an oversized ship, passenger-unfriendly schedule changes, and spiking fuel prices coupled with what Osnes termed “fuel consumption that was out of this world compared to us.”

Osnes conceded that operating SoundRunner without a subsidy “is going to be a challenge.” Close coordination with terra-firma transit is a must if the port intends to fill the Spirit, which accommodates 150 passengers. The port is working with Kitsap Transit and Jefferson Transit so that buses will get commuters to the dock at the right time and meet returning commuters to take them home.

“It's going to be door-to-door,” he noted.

The port is thus placing its bets on car-free commuting, no small ambition in a society built around automobiles. The Kingston-Seattle service will cater to the environmentally conscious. The passage will consume about 60 gallons of marine diesel, which translates into 50 passenger-miles per gallon — roughly analogous to a 50-mpg car with one person in it — if the ship is full. The state ferry system does not keep data on its ships, but the best available figures indicate that its ferries manage only around 10 passenger-miles per gallon.

In accordance with a 2007 legislative directive, the state got out of the passenger-only ferry business last year, turning its attention instead to maintaining its aging fleet of car ferries.

The state's departure from passenger-only service has encouraged fresh ideas in places other than Kingston, too. Kitsap Transit has operated its foot ferries since 2003, and pedestrian ferries have been plying routes between downtown Seattle and both West Seattle and Vashon Island since the1990s.

Kitsap Transit is working toward putting a low-wake foot ferry into service between Bremerton and Seattle, and pedestrian ferries are under discussion in Port Townsend and Port Gamble. The idea enjoys a following in the San Juan Islands but is hampered there by an absence of public transit to handle the land leg for commuters.

“You've got to be nimble and flexible,” Agnew said of those thinking about additional foot-ferry services up and down the Sound. “You have to count on federal capital and innovative operating partnerships. The ports are the logical operators. If you look at the [state] ferry system and implement some reforms, then you ought to look at contracting out passenger ferries with first-class operators like Argosy and Victoria Clipper. There ought to be room for private operators. There are a lot of retired sea captains out here who, for $50,000 a year, would be happy to get behind the helm again.”


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C.B. Hall is a freelance writer and has been following Pacific Northwest transportation issues since the 1990s. He can be reached through [e-mail].

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Comments:
Comment by GaryP, posted Tue, Aug 17, 2:58 p.m.


The problem with a passenger only ferry is that it's not cost effective to move small numbers of people on water. Ferries are fuel in-efficient and time wise slow. The other problem is that state law forbids competition with public ferries, so that there are no private water taxis for anyone to take a private trip from anywhere you'd want to live to anywhere you can work.

There should be some water taxi's that run all hours, that go from beach front to beach front.

As for using private ferry service like Argosy, that's a non starter as they are only profitable if they pay lower wages than state ferry workers, and do no boat maintence. As the city of Seattle found out with the West Seattle Ferry.
- GaryP

crosscut.com/2010/08/17/ferries/20037/Are-passenger-only-ferries-on-the-way-back--/

[Kahloke]

Interesting. $15 for a round-trip is more than twice what WSF charges for passengers on its Central Sound runs, but after you factor in the bus and/or rail fare to get between Edmonds and downtown Seattle (Kingston to Edmonds via WSF vessel, then bus or Sounder Train to downtown Seattle from Edmonds), it may be a little more competitive, especially when you consider the passenger-only ferry will be direct, and significantly faster than the combined ferry/train or bus routing folks currently have to do now. I am curious as to how well this venture will do. As the article stated, Aqua Express couldn't make a go of it, so we shall see. My biggest issue with Kingston is the lack of parking and infrequent bus service to and from the park and ride lots. Perhaps Kitsap Transit will step up to the plate and increase bus service if ridership on the new PO boat grows and this enterprise actually survives.

[Neil]

"The Port of Kingston received $3.5 million in federal funding to purchase the ships and ready them for service but anticipates operating them without a subsidy, according to ferry program manager Eric Osnes. Passenger fares and charter income will cover the bills, he expects. By comparison, the state's car ferries recover only 65% of their expenses through fares."

Oh, puh-leeze. Until we get past this nonsensical notion that passenger ferries can operate without subsidies, or privately, we'll never have a viable marine transit system, either in Puget Sound or BC.

Four of the most famous harbour ferry operations in the world are in New York, Hong Kong, Sydney, and San Francisco. They are all either free, or heavily subsidized, and those places all have a much bigger population to draw on than Seattle or Vancouver.

This ferry might be a great idea, even though it seems rather expensive. But it won't cover it's operating expenses. Hopefully that won't determine whether it succeeds or fails.