4 ms·

It may be useful for you but in the grand scheme all the new ferries cover only a trivial percentage of the total number of daily trips.

• CydeWeys 8y ago
  And the ferries are heavily subsidized and very expensive to operate, and they pollute quite heavily. They don't compare remotely favorably to the subway along any axis except start-up cost (it's cheaper to buy a boat and build some piers than to build a subway tunnel).
  • ricardoreis 8y ago
    except start-up cost Which is, well, hugely significant when you think about it.
    • CydeWeys 8y ago
      Cities should have a planning timeframe for infrastructure improvements with a horizon longer than a couple years.
      • ricardoreis 8y ago
        Well, yeah. And they should probably be having discussions based on something beside snarky retorts and popcorn-throwing too, I guess. But I guess those discussions will need to happen elsewhere.
    • bradleyjg 8y ago
      Even if you could afford to run enough ferries to make a dent, which you can’t, they simply don’t have the bandwidth. Some people tried to make the math work for the L shutdown and even if you had a line of ferries just following each other as close as safely possible it wouldn’t be nearly enough. Subways are incredibly efficient at moving large numbers of people.