Neither rain nor storm kept 16 courageous Kingstonians from a December meeting with WSF.
Here are highlights of the night:
— Great cookies!
— Walla Walla: As you may recall, one of the Walla Walla’s drive motors fried when power was applied with the shaft locked. For reasons we don’t understand, WSF’s spare rotor wasn’t ready to go and had to be shipped to Anaheim, Calif. for refurbishment. If that is successful, Walla Walla will return in mid-March.
For the first week in January, the 87-car Klahowya will be our second boat; afterwards, it will be 144-car super-class ferries.
— On-time performance: Afternoon on-time performance is 85-90 percent for five minutes, 96-99 percent for 10 minutes.
A long-term issue remains. An average of 51 trains pass through Edmonds daily. This will grow to 77 by 2020 and 96 by 2030. If the proposed shipping terminal in Everett goes through, add another 18 trains per day. This means 11 hours of train traffic daily.
To keep ferries on schedule, it’s been proposed to run ferry traffic under the train tracks at the cost of about $70 million. The alternative is moving the terminal south to Point Edwards for about $200 million.
— Fares: Expect a 2.5 percent fare increase next year.
Other changes being considered include: Increasing the tiny car discount, reducing passenger fares by changing the current vehicle/passenger fare ratio of 3.4 to 1, and allowing multi-ride ferry fares to be in the ORCA system.
A concern was voiced that a single fare for all central Sound isn’t equitable. Elsewhere, routes pay on the basis of their length. Here, we all pay based on the Bainbridge rate, so Kingston pays a bit more while Bremerton pays a lot less.
— WSDOT budget: With a sprig of holly in her heart, the outgoing governor has proposed $4.8 million of ferry service cuts on all routes except for Kingston and Bainbridge. This is a distraction from the real problem of mega-project cost overruns (think Boston’s Big Dig) during a revenue decline. A recent “business roundtable” recommended increasing the gas tax and something like an motor-vehicle excise tax to save WSDOT.
— Schedule change: WSF is looking into using our Friday night schedule on Saturday and Sunday. This gets us more evening sailings, but we’d lose the 12:55 a.m. Saturday/Sunday Edmonds sailing.
— Ferry staffing: Missed and late sailings because of “no shows” hit the San Juans, Clinton and Point Defiance hardest. The causes were: Reading the schedule incorrectly and personal problems (80 percent); dispatcher errors (20 percent). WSF’s actions include discipline, a joint letter with the unions on the problem, and a management/labor task force.
Crewing that allows the boat to sail with reduced crew when at less-than-maximum passengers would eliminate most missed sailings. A ferry captain commented that he would not be covered by his liability insurance should he decide to get underway with less than the required number of crew members aboard. FYI the ferry’s USCG Certificate of Inspection, which says what’s required for safe operations, is posted for review onboard.
— Liquefied Natural Gas: Safety and security plans for LNG fuel are being developed and the next step will be a design to convert Issaquah-class ferries. The conversion will reduce fuel costs by about half and also meet all future emissions requirements.
— Other comments were made on: early cars being offloaded last, Edmonds line jumping, ORCA cards going through turnstiles when regular tickets can’t, tight spacing that won’t allow car doors to open. There were also sent-in questions that WSF didn’t get to. We’ll get the answers to these in future columns.
— FerryFare is written by Walt Elliott, chairman of the Kingston Ferry Advisory Committee. He is also chairman of the Kingston Port Commission. Contact him at elliottmoore@comcast.net.
