What’s Wrong With Fast Ferries? Plenty Say Opponents! Copyright Peter Marsh
The sight of a big catamaran swiftly cutting cleanly through the water is so common these days on the northwest coast that it barely rates a mention. From the San Juans to Prince William Sound, twin-hull boats are popular for wildlife viewing and scenic tours; Victoria Clipper has run a daily international service from Seattle to Victoria for many years. In fact, these craft have been favored by tour operators all over the world for their speed, reduced motion, and wide decks for 30 years.
From a modest start in Australia in 1981, catamarans quickly gained a foothold on almost every major tourist and ferry route in the world–from the sands of Arabia to the fjords of Norway. Ferry operators in the Northwest also hoped to integrate fast ferries into the systems run by Washington, British Columbia and Alaska. But after 25 years of innovation and the outlay of over a billion dollars, the dream of fast water transport for pedestrians is dead in the water.
Invariably, the fast passenger-only boats amazed commuters with their speed of 25-35 knots—double that of the traditional car ferries–but after extensive trials around Puget Sound and the Georgia Strait, they all disappeared. After a brief life in the fast lane, some issue soon arose to slow, postpone or cancel the service, ranging from engine failure to lack of comfort to wake damage.
Sadder but wiser, the daily riders drifted back to their predictable daily date with the slow but steady car ferries, and the fast ferries were all sold off at a considerable financial loss. In this story, I will try to explain why they failed, how these boats have fared under their new owners. The latest chapter in this on-again off-again romance played out in the summer of 2012 on Puget Sound on three separate routes run by local organizations: Bremerton–Seattle, Kingston–Seattle, plus the Seattle “Water Taxi” to West Seattle and Vashon Island.
The first two routes used boats built by All American Marine in Bellingham, a yard that specialize in hydrofoil-supported catamarans. Both were local, not state, operations and both closed down in the fall–Kingston’s for good after spending too much money to carry too few people. Bremerton’s has a fighting chance to re-group and re-appear, but its future depends on an equally challenging task: convincing the voters of Kitsap County that is worth continuing when funded entirely by county residents. That leaves the modest Water Taxi as the only survivor in this latest edition of NW adventure in fast ferry land.
However, the Bremerton boat is far more significant than all the other ferries: it has the notable distinction of being the world’s first ultra low-wake fast ferry, designed specifically to transit the “No Wake” zone in the narrow Rich Passage without harming the shoreline–at a speed of 38 knots!
The Redlining of Rich Passage
This is just the latest chapter in the seemingly never-ending saga of Rich Passage, the narrow strait between the south end of Bainbridge Island and the north of the Kitsap Peninsula. It is a narrow two-mile channel that makes this route very problematic. The strait is lined with beachfront properties that are especially vulnerable to wake damage; from the very first day of service, the fast service ran into stormy seas because of its wake–plus mechanical problems on several occasions.
Complaints of severe erosion were soon arriving at WSF headquarters. The waterfront property owners reported that the fast ferry wake was washing away their sandy beaches, damaging bulkheads and eroding sea walls. The home owners refused to be bullied into passivity by the WSF, which reluctantly agreed to slow all its vessels down to 12 knots in the narrows.
Equally surprising was the state’s strategic reaction to this issue: it became the acid test, the hurdle that all future fast ferries would have to clear. In retrospect, it does look as if the entire fast-ferry issue was side-tracked by this significant decision that quite literally poisoned the waters for fast ferries, whose survival depended on the reaction of Rich Passage residents.
You can get a feel for the wake of a typical early INCAT on board King County’s 77′ Water Taxi catamaran service from Pier 50 downtown to West Seattle. I took a test ride last November on the 10-minute run to West Seattle and saw how the twin rooster tales built up at 24 knots, creating a distinct single plume astern. The Rachel Marie did in fact run for a year past the sandy shores of Rich Passage, and it was not hard to imagine how this ripped up the beach there.
Nonetheless, the fast ferry concept had quickly caught the public imagination in the 1980’s. Ferry backers liked to compare the modern fast craft to the old-time mosquito fleet that connected the coastal communities in the pioneer days. Thousands of people all around the sound were convinced that this was the answer to their local problems from traffic jams at the ferry landing to economic development on main street. The idea attracted the kind of inspiration and energy that we only see today in fringe political movements. If those high hopes had been fulfilled, today we might have a fleet of high-tech water buses buzzing around the sound today, all competing for our business!
Complete Story to follow………………..