Do you write letters to your state representatives? This is a letter I wrote, which I’m sure my lawmakers were delighted to receive:

My dear lawmakers,

I had a few minutes, waiting to move the laundry before bed – yawn – and thought I’d tell you about my evening.

First of all, we live in Kingston. We are 10 minutes from the ferry, if we keep to the 25 miles per hour speed limits. If, theoretically, we increased that speed a bit, we are as little as eight minutes away. Not that we do that.

We love to ride the ferry. We live in a ferry town, and feel the changing traffic pulse as the ferries arrive and depart. We do not commute for work, just for fun trips, like seeing grandparents or going to the zoo.

We like our grandparents, so we visit them as often as we can. Often used to mean once or twice a month; these days it’s six to eight times a year.

We can’t afford more.

When we leave home and head to the Kingston terminal, we know what we’re about. We know the schedule pretty well, know exactly when to expect a line and how to avoid one. When the one-way road going toward the payment booths splits into two, we know which lane goes quicker.

Our grandparents live in Lake Stevens. Look at where Lake Stevens is compared to Kingston. Please, do look. Tracing your finger along the major roads and waterways is helpful.

After an enjoyable visit with grandparents, we put our five children into our minivan and head home. It would be wonderful if we could drive down Interstate 5 and then take the ferry westbound, but that just doesn’t happen anymore.

In fact, when we drive past the 205th Street exit by Lake Forest Park, I am so filled with longing I could cry. Home would be less than an hour away, if only we turned toward Edmonds.

All of our five children are between 6 and 18. My husband and I are adults. The total for us to travel westbound on the ferry, is $49.15. That’s one way.

Instead of spending $45-50 on our trip home (remember, this is just the trip home) from the grandparents in Lake Stevens, we drive around. We drive almost two extra hours, through Seattle, SeaTac, Federal Way, Tacoma, over the Narrows Bridge (which thankfully, is still free westbound), Port Orchard, Bremerton, Silverdale, Poulsbo, and finally home to Kingston, where we wearily unload our car to the sound of the ferry horn approaching Kingston.

You may say, with the price of gas, surely you don’t save that much. Well, with the current price of gas at $2.90 a gallon, we go through about eight gallons of gas, so the cost of driving home is about $23.20. We save about $26 each time we visit our grandparents by avoiding the ferry westbound.

In the last six months, we have made this trip five times.

Why should you care?

We are one more vehicle on the I-5 corridor (and other freeways) during that extra two hours. We are also one less car utilizing the ferries and giving our money to the ferry system. When we drove around tonight, a partially full ferry still crossed the sound, just without us and our money.

If all members of my family had driven motorcycles (a total of seven motorcycles) onto the ferry tonight, it would have cost us $6 less than the seven of us packed into one van.

Heck, we could have driven two cars westbound on the ferry, with the same amount of people, and only paid $4 extra. Aren’t we supposed to be rewarded for carpooling?

If, theoretically, I had tossed a blanket over my sleeping children (because we are smart ferry riders, and always aim for late night and early morning runs), the weight of my children on the ferry would not have increased the hardship on the boat to take us across.

Sorry if this is long, but driving through Seattle, SeaTac, Federal Way, Tacoma, over the Narrows Bridge (which thankfully, is still free), Port Orchard, Bremerton, Silverdale, Poulsbo, and finally home to Kingston… I had a long time to think about it.

Here are three thoughts:

1) Please make the ferries affordable for regular use. What’s the point of passenger costs being so high?

2) Remember that affordable, usable ferries take traffic off of the busy freeways.

3) Is anybody still reading?

Thank you! I need to go move the laundry and – yawn – head to bed.