If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs
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70 MPH, yet dead in the water? Not when there's federal funny money still to be spent
Jim Cameron considers the prospects of Bridgeport’s new high-speed ferry; they’re dismal
… Bridgeport politics are infamous. The fact that they keep re-electing convicted felons to high office should tell you a lot. But on the transportation front the locals’ behavior is equally hard to understand.
Case in point: the city’s latest dreams of a high speed ferry.
Actually, more than dreams. Because money is being spent, yet again, and this time not just on a study, but a new dock…. without a ferry.
As Brian Lockhart writes in the CT Post, the city started back in October building a new dock on Water Street (near the existing slow-speed ferry terminal). The $11.2 million dock is being paid for with $10.5 million federal money and $700,000 kicked in by the local Bridgeport Port Authority, just as goodwill.
Normally such a project would be announced with fanfares, but not in Bridgeport. Why the stealth? Well, they may be building a dock, but they don’t have a ferry to operate there.
After the dock is built the city will then issue an RFP for a company to run a ferry service. Usually such projects are done by seeking expressions of interest from vendors, then doing the construction… but not in Bridgeport.
I have written any number of times why ferry service makes no sense: ferries can’t offer the frequency of trips, the fares will easily be double the train fare, they can’t operate in all weather, they’re fuel inefficient and may end up being slower than Metro-North.
A Bridgeport ferry would probably stop in Stamford on its way to New York City, maybe even in Glen Cove, NY, too. That Long Island bedroom community built a beautiful $17 million high speed ferry dock, but it has sat empty for the last six months because the ferry couldn’t get enough passengers.
There are successful high speed ferries in the New York City area but they’re all heavily subsidized and don’t operate in direct competition with rail service. And the operators of those ferry could very easily start service from Connecticut… if they thought there was a demand. But they haven’t, because there isn’t.
It’s probably safe to say that Jim Cameron and I don’t share the same politics, but he’s been squawking about the folly of a high-speed ferry to NYC since at least 2006, and that I can identify with: I’ve been a life-long squawker, with equal success, but it feels good.
Here's a portion of what he had to say in 2019, recapping what he originally said in 2006 — all of his objections remain valid.
Since 2006, I have written about why ferries will never work here. But let me remind you of the high points:
“High-speed” ferries are not fast. They can only go 29 mph in open waters, half the speed of a Metro-North train. Speeds in excess of 30 mph mean higher operating costs for additional highly skilled crew. [And they’d have to slow down to 5 MPH entering Stamford Harbor, for instance, and continuing upstream to pick up passengers — Ed].
They only carry 149 passengers — compared to 1,000 on a train — and are gas-guzzling polluters (vs. clean electric trains).
A fleet of two such ferries might make two round-trips a day (vs. every 20 minutes for rush-hour trains).
They can’t operate in all weather.
The fares would be at least double those of the train and they’d still need huge subsidies to attract operators.
New York state and federal subsidies of $4.7 million were wasted on a ferry from Yonkers to New York City, which ran for four years. At its peak, it carried just 90 passengers a day, paying $8 each way — subsidized at $50 per ride.
Or consider Glen Cove’s experience with failed ferries on Long Island.
In 2001, that bedroom community just 28 miles from New York City on the Long Island Railroad, began ferry service to the city at fares pretty close to those charged on the train. It failed after a year due to low ridership even though it received a $1 million subsidy from the MTA.
In the “summer of hell” in 2017 when track work at Penn Station delayed trains, the service resumed with two boats each rush hour carrying a total of fewer than 80 passengers. The subsidies for the July-to-September runs totaled more than $1.5 million. That’s a $257 subsidy per passenger per trip.
In 2016, Glen Cove used a federal grant to build a $16.6 million stylish new ferry terminal and dock. But aside from the summer of 2017, the city has been unable to find a ferry operator to resume service.
So guess what: the feds asked for their money back.
Glen Cove had until last January to resume ferry service or refund Washington its money. After an extension, the city council voted 4-3 to hire a new, heavily subsidized ferry operator — not because they liked the proposal, but because the alternative of paying back $16 million was even worse.
So if the Lamont transportation team is so excited about using federal money to study, build or even start a private-public partnership for ferry service from Connecticut, they should consider the consequences. Federal money may seem “free,” but if it locks you into a money-losing, heavily subsidized, under-utilized fast ferry for Fat Cats going to Wall Street, the long-term cost could be huge.
I’ll add that in the early ‘90s another club officer and I were delegated by the RYC to attend a public hearing in Norwalk to hear a Coast Guard forum on the Pequot Indians [sic] plan to build three high-speed catamarans and establish a ferry service to Long Island and New York City. We were there to learn about the possible impact on sailors by ferries powering down the Sound at 70 mph, but, although we were reassured that the cats’ speed would be limited to half that, we left shaking our heads at the impossibility of the entire project. The Pequots did build those ferries, did establish a ferry service, and it did go bust shortly thereafter.
