Washington State Ferries will populate our Community Center from 6 to 8 p.m., May 8 with people and posters showing they’re thinking about their long-range plans. You can preview the presentations online at WSFLongRangePlan.com. Big issues for Kingston have been congestion, capacity and fares.
Congestion
Like in the cartoons, ferry traffic congestion has been getting worse for decades. In 2000, a project to rehabilitate the ferry traffic through Kingston was designed. Through the tenacity of Sen. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island, the planning for this may be completed this year. Meanwhile, Kitsap County District 1 Commissioner Robert Gelder’s “Highway 104 Working Group” has been tackling things like lack of toilets, signage, a downtown traffic camera and an automated boarding pass dispenser. While there’s light at the end of the tunnel, we still need funding to complete the trip.
Capacity
Ferry plans haven’t dealt with our worsening overloads. WSF has even given up on measuring our ferry wait times so they don’t know what we riders are dealing with. While adding ferry capacity would be selling like meatballs at IKEA, previous planning has been aimed at using “demand management” strategies to get cars off of the ferries … yeesh!
Fares
WSF assumes that our fares will keep going up at two-and-a-half percent per year. Is that fair when Kingston runs at a 16 percent profit while most others have a 30 percent to 40 percent loss? “Demand management” strategies being considered would shift riders to less-used runs by increasing morning and afternoon fares while reducing or eliminating frequent user discounts. That’s doubly unfair. What about positive ways to level ferry traffic?
Other areas to consider offering some advice include:
Replacement boats: Should the boats that replace our Jumbo ferries be two large boats or three smaller ones? Three boats would mean more frequent sailings and more total capacity, but we’d likely get cut back to two boats in the winter.
Reservations: Should we push for reservations here in Kingston? On paper, reservations would eliminate the back-ups, spread out demand and provide us guaranteed space. But we’d need to plan our rides ahead. What about just reservations for commercial vehicles to help our local businesses?
Technology: How can information technology improve the system? BONGO didn’t work out so well; what would work better? How could online ferry information be improved?
Efficiency: How can WSF cut costs? When the legislature has asked for cuts, the answer has been to cut some runs. A better way is going after inefficiencies that don’t deliver value. These are obvious to riders, but often not to management.
Ferry experiments: The Governor stopped building the new, “standardized” 144-car ferries to convert one of our Jumbo Mark II ferries into a plug-in hybrid. This could delay replacing our old boats until they are well past 60 years old. Today, ferries have a growing backlog of overdue maintenance. If we further delay their replacement, are we heading for a shipwreck?
Schedule change: WSF is proposing a schedule change to move sailings up earlier in the morning, make tweaks in other sailings and let us party on with a late Saturday night boat. There will be detailed schedule proposals, and you can make comments, at the planning meeting April 8.
Anything else? By law, WSF is also required to talk to riders to “be properly informed as to problems being experienced within the area.” The public meeting is a great time to “inform” WSF.
— Your New Ferry Advisory Committee
Note: Laura Schmucker, a life-long ferry user, has joined the Ferry Advisory Committee, which meet on the second Monday of the month, (if we feel up to it) at the Village Green at 6:30. You can email us anytime elliottmoore@comcast.net.
