The Ferry System

Bellingham Water Taxi Transit:

Saturday I went for a ride on a prototype waterborne transit out of Bellingham. Bellingham is a medium sized city that has its own fire department and a nice big salt water bay. Newcastle uses a neighbor’s fire department and only has a little lake.

Here’s the problem here in Washington (named after a president who never won Iowa). The Greater Newcastle megalopolis of about 4 million people stretches along both sides of Puget Sound. Go to Google Maps and search on Puget Sound. See?

Puget Sound is too wide for a highway bridge. We have tides, earthquakes, container ships, sea serpents, whales, canoes, sewage outlets, and nuclear subs out there. A bridge would only be in the way.

Therefore Washington carries people and their cars over the water in boats. We have the largest fleet of state owned ferries in the whole United States, and Texas. We like our ferry boats because they have wi-fi. We can check our email and eBay auctions. For many years they had food on board but the state got all snooty about it and the food contractor quit. It took way too long to sort that out and now we only have pseudo food. But the coffee’s not bad.

Many of these ferries were built on leftover WWI cargo hulls that require constant bailing. Ferry employees are called “bailers” for this reason – they all have to take turns. The system is managed by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). The name of the boss is Paula.
Last week one of the bailers was standing under a boat in dry-dock. He hit it with a hammer. Now Paula is docking his pay for the hammer. It busted through and disappeared into the food bay where it dissolved. This is just one example of the current shape of the fleet.

Paula and Christine think we need to update the ferry system and buy new boats, smaller hammers, and waterproof paint. Riders would like to see that as well. Except for Timmy. He wants to eliminate taxes and let the state fall apart around our ears. He’s too dumb to make the connection that tax is just a short name for “people sharing the cost of running the state.”
Oh, sure, a lot of things we may not need, but if we did things only as I want you’d vote me out of office. Which is why I don’t run.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, Bellingham.

The Bellingham Bay water taxi is a pretty good alternative to our ancient ferries. For example it slows down to look at interesting birds. And the captain buys bagels for everyone. What could be better?

Apparently a new chief of Ferry Boat Operations would be better. Christine and Paula just named Dave to be head bailer. He looked at Google Maps and says the ferry system is a floating highway. During the interview he pretty much said it can’t be too hard to manage a few old boats. Right?

There are 28 ferries (more or less on any given day depending on hammers) and 20 different docks on the system. They carry 26 million passengers. The web site doesn’t say if this is per day, month, or year. I’d have to assume year. I don’t know, but traffic near the ferry docks can be pretty bad.

The ferry system ranks right up there on the list of really big problems along with the Alaska Way Viaduct and the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. Fun times to come.

Al