You’re crawling along I-95
or cruising on Metro-North and you look out your window to the south. There’s Long Island Sound, glistening in the
sunlight. “Wow,” you think, “I sure wish
I was commuting out there on the water.”
So why is it that we’ve
never harnessed ferry boats for our commutation? There are many good reasons:
SLOWER SPEED: Fast ferries can make about 30 knots (35 mph)
in open waters, half the speed of a train.
But to reach downtown areas in major cities like New Haven, Bridgeport,
Norwalk and Stamford, they have to sail up rivers and inlets with 5 knot speed
limits. That really slows down the ride.
WHERE TO DOCK: If we
put ferry terminals closer to the Sound we’d be eating into the most expensive
water-view real estate we have. And how
would you get there. By car, parking
where? By shuttle bus, taking how long?
TIMETABLES: At rush hour on Metro-North there’s a
train every 20 minutes to Grand Central. There isn’t a ferry service in the US
that can offer that frequency. Would you
be willing to wait an hour if you miss the boat?
DEPENDABILITY: On a beautiful day a ferry ride to work
sounds like fun? But how about in a
winter storm? You’d be back on the
dependable ol’ train in a heartbeat.
COST: Even the ferry operators who’ve considered service in
Connecticut say it would come with fares at least twice that of
Metro-North. Aren’t people complaining
already about the trains being too expensive?
FUEL: Fast ferry boats are gas guzzlers, the aquatic equivalent
to the Concorde. Even when the Pequot
Indians built high-speed catamarans to ferry gamblers to their casino to lose
money it cost them a fortune. Those
ferries are still dry-docked, too expensive to operate.
COMPETITION: When a private ferry operator offered
service from Glen Cove Long Island to midtown, it lasted only a few
months. Same thing when ferry service
was offered on the Hudson River from Yonkers.
Why? Because both routes
paralleled existing train service and the ferries couldn’t compete. Neither would it work here in Connecticut
where Metro-North operates.
SUBSIDIES: Every private ferry boat operator
who’s even considered service from Connecticut to Manhattan has demanded
subsidies for land, parking and operations.
Given the dismal track record of ferries vs trains, shouldn’t we subsidize
what we know already works… trains?
Now, lest you think I’m an
aquaphobe, let me say that ferries do work, in certain cases. Especially when they go from point A to point
B when you can’t do that on land. Like
the Bridgeport – Port Jefferson or New London to Orient Point (LI) cross-Sound
ferries. Or consider Seattle, where
ferries connect downtown with island suburbs.
A ferry from Connecticut to
LaGuardia Airport might make sense. But in the late 80’s when Pan Am tried to
compete with Easter Airlines in the lucrative air-shuttle market, they
introduced the Pan
Am Water Shuttle connecting LaGuardia to midtown. I rode it once, on a bright summer’s day, and
it was sweet. But even funneling
passengers to its planes, Pan Am couldn’t afford the aquatic connection. And since Amtrak’s Acela came along, who
flies the shuttles anyway?
One final reason why I don’t
think ferries would work: nobody else
does so either. I’m sure that operators
have looked at Connecticut’s gold coast, crunched the numbers and backed
away. It’s a free market, folks. If ferries made sense (and dollars), they’d
be running by now. But they aren’t, and
probably won’t be, for the common sense reasons I have sited.
Republished with permission of Hearst CT Media.
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