KINGSTON — One answer to fixing late boats in Kingston may be fewer sailings.

Washington State Ferries planners are considering revising the Kingston to Edmonds ferry schedule this summer as a way of improving on-time performance. Boats arriving at the Kingston terminal were on time within 10 minutes 88 percent of the time in 2009, compared to 95 percent at the Bainbridge terminal.

Problems on the Kingston route compounded in the summer as ridership went up. Boats were sometimes running 30 minutes late on the 22-minute route.

“We don’t want to go through a summer like we had last summer or the summer before,” Washington State Ferries Senior Planner Ray Deardorf said.

Ferries presented a draft sailing schedule to the Kingston Ferry Advisory Committee last week and plans to modify the schedule based on public comments.

The draft schedule would remove two sailings from the route, Mondays through Thursdays, and Saturdays, lowering the total number of round trips from 25 to 23. Sundays would lose one trip. No trips would be dropped on Fridays.

The reduction in sailings would allow Ferries to spread out its departures and give the boats more time for loading and unloading.

Comments can be sent to wsfplanning@wsdot.wa.gov.