There’s another way to float WSF’s future boats | Letters, Jan. 9
Published 8:00 pm Monday, January 12, 2009
Washington State Ferries published their draft long-range plan at the last possible moment – Friday evening on Dec. 19 – in order to meet the required public comment period and still get the plan to the Legislature before the end of January.
Beginning last Monday, public hearings will be held for each ferry-served community (Jan. 13 on Bainbridge Island), and the comment period ends the night of the last meeting on Jan. 21. The draft plan has two options, and Plan B had not been seen before its Dec. 19 release, although it includes significant impacts on service. It would reduce Bremerton service to one boat year-round, eliminate night service for both Bremerton and Kingston, and reduce the Vashon-Southworth-Fauntleroy run to two boats.
Fare-box recovery is estimated to be 97 percent under this plan, and it can be assumed that the Bainbridge run would generate an operating surplus. To reduce capital costs would result in no new vessels built beyond Island Home (already approved) until 2021. The assumption is that additional service would be provided by passenger-only service funded by local governments, although in Kitsap such funding measures have failed twice, and that was before the recent economic downturn.
The purpose of the WSF plan is to minimize the support provided by the state to the ferry system. Half of the WSF fleet is 40 to 50 years old; it is the need to replace these aging vessels that drives the capital demands. That need will only increase.
There is another option. The federal government is proposing a federal stimulus package designed to generate jobs and create needed infrastructure. Priority is for projects that don’t have a long lead time before actual construction begins, so they have an immediate effect on the economy. We have the perfect project here in building new boats. The design for the Island Home boat is ready for bid; in fact the original request was for two boats of that design, with potentially two more to follow.
What stopped them was the very thing that prevents us from using federal stimulus funds – the “Build in Washington” law. That law is seen by the federal government as anti-competitive – and it is.
The bid for the Island Home was one-third higher than the engineer’s estimate, but WSF was stuck with one bidder and no chance for ship builders from out of state to bid. Take it or leave it. Only one new boat is being built, and no more until 2021. It’s time to change a law that is causing us to cut off our nose to spite our face.
Martha Burke, Chair
Ferry Advisory Committee
