Organizing a passenger ferry is too big a job for one person.

We know that now, after watching SoundRunner burn through two program managers in two months of operation last fall.

Today that job is being handled by 10 people, the Port of Kingston’s new ferry advisory committee. Since January the panel has pored over the intricacies of running a passenger ferry service to Seattle.

As of this writing, the committee is preparing to report to the port commission, which we assume will order them to march ahead with SoundRunner Part 2. The opening date has been optimistically pegged in April, but summer may be a safer bet.

Assembling this committee was a shrewd move on the part of port commissioners, something they didn’t have time to consider in their grant-driven rush to launch the service last year.

The panel is stocked with executives, numbers crunchers and commuters who know what riders want. It contains a a level of expertise the port couldn’t afford if it was hiring a team of professionals. Instead it’s getting volunteers from North Kitsap who have a real stake in whether the service succeeds.

In preparing for SoundRunner Part 2, the committee  has a business plan that appears far more detailed than anything conceived in preparation for SoundRunner Part 1. Unpaid community members are drumming stories out of newspapers just as fast as the port’s flashy marketing firm did last fall. From the committee’s discussions, it appears SoundRunner Part 2 will have a real Web site, a communications system for relaying cancellation notices to riders, an emergency shuttle for days when it’s too rough to run and  even a new ramp for safely loading the port’s backup ferry.

All of these things sound simple and were glaringly absent during that ill-fated October of 2010.
The port will soon need to hire another manager so its committee members can get back to their day jobs. But the SoundRunner sequel is a hit the port will owe a lot to these volunteers.