3 ms·

There are actually lots of ferries in SFBA, just not on silly routes like SF to RWC. They're funded using the justification of "water emergency transportation"

by rdl 13y ago

There are actually lots of ferries in SFBA, just not on silly routes like SF to RWC. They're funded using the justification of "water emergency transportation" (i.e. post earthquake or something else which takes out a bridge), but basically are just to keep wealthy and prominent voters in a few places happy. Essentially they're heavily subsidized (true operating costs are around $50-150/ride; price is about $8; ridership levels are very low on many routes). http://sanfranciscobayferry.com/ http://sanfranciscobayferry.com/ In Seattle it makes sense because it's between islands, some of which have no bridge access. In the Bay Area, there are bridges directly on many routes, and aside from a couple of tourist places, everywhere the ferries run is at worst two bridges or two segments of ground travel away. (In Seattle, the transit authority is actually fairly competent too, by comparison)

micro_cam 13y ago
Actually the biggest commuter ferry routes in the Seattle area can be drove round. Ie Kingston and Bremerton are on a Peninsula and Bainbridge Island is connected via the (short) agate pass bridge. The idea of more bridges has been brought up but met with strong "not in my backyard" resistance. A short bridge from Bremerton to Bainbridge would make a lot of sense (and allow two ferry routes to be combined) but the wealthy Bainbridge Islanders are against being connected to the less well off Bremerton.
- rdl 13y ago
  Ah, that makes sense. I looked at Whidbey Island before (and visited; it's nice!), but didn't realize you could actually drive there (even if it's super out of the way).
nkurz 13y ago
Your numbers struck me as surprisingly high. It seems hard to believe that running a ferry across the bay with 100 passengers can cost $10,000. But there are definitely articles backing you up: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/South-San-Francisco-ferry-loaded-with-subsidies-3659513.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/South-San-... While basically matching your numbers for the new routes, the article also mentions that the effective subsidy for the older routes is about $15 per ride. I guess part of the question is how to distinguish "start up costs" from "operating costs".
- Recoil42 13y ago
  > Your numbers struck me as surprisingly high. It seems hard to believe that running a ferry across the bay with 100 passengers can cost $10,000. I still found it hard to believe. So I took sfgate's numbers, and did the math. 100,000 riders a year? That's only ~270 riders per day. For an assumption of 8AM to 10PM, it isn't a hundred passengers going across the bay in per hour – it's a grand total of 19. And for that, they built a $26M ferry terminal? No wonder it costs so much.
  - ChuckMcM 13y ago
    They only commute to and from work, with a total of 280 seats (two 140 seat ferries), figure two trips south, and two trips north, so 4 trips a day, a carrying capacity of 560 commuters, getting 279 would be a utilization of about 50% (that seems a bit optimistic)
    - rdl 13y ago
      I looked at this a lot because my GF works in Brisbane, CA and we live in Oakland. It takes 1.5h to commute by land public transit (and is crowded); going via ferry takes a similar amount of time (but, no flexibility on time), but SSF to anywhere is hard. There's a shuttle for Genentech at the ferry, but going the 2 miles from the ferry to Brisbane is kind of a pain still. The easiest thing is actually still to drive through SF traffic across the bridge in the morning, even as a non-HOV, which is a pretty clear failure of transit (most of the fault is Brisbane, which is just a horrible place in general). BART and then Uber from 16th st or something seems like the only semi-viable non-self-drive option. Pretty expensive, though.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  Nice article, it says basically that a 140 seat Ferry is $8M. The compares to about $300K for 60 seat bus, or at most $900K for equivalent seats. I could not track down a solid dataset for operating cost per mile for a large vessel. I know that in general it is quite high because it takes much more energy to push through the water than it does to roll on freeways (and even less to roll on rails). Further there are weather systems that would keep a boat at the dock but a bus or train could drive through. Of all the transportation modes trains are the most economical to operate on a marginal cost basis but have the high startup and operating costs from the essentially dedicated infratstructure. It would be interesting to see if they could build a floating train somehow (trust me, this is the kind of project that gets you promoted at Google :-) basically float a monorail track between up and down the bay such that you got the energy/operating costs benefits of rail setup without the huge land/tax/easement costs of a land locked rail line.

by rdl 13y ago

micro_cam 13y ago

Actually the biggest commuter ferry routes in the Seattle area can be drove round. Ie Kingston and Bremerton are on a Peninsula and Bainbridge Island is connected via the (short) agate pass bridge. The idea of more bridges has been brought up but met with strong "not in my backyard" resistance. A short bridge from Bremerton to Bainbridge would make a lot of sense (and allow two ferry routes to be combined) but the wealthy Bainbridge Islanders are against being connected to the less well off Bremerton.

rdl 13y ago
Ah, that makes sense. I looked at Whidbey Island before (and visited; it's nice!), but didn't realize you could actually drive there (even if it's super out of the way).

nkurz 13y ago

Your numbers struck me as surprisingly high. It seems hard to believe that running a ferry across the bay with 100 passengers can cost $10,000. But there are definitely articles backing you up: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/South-San-Francisco-ferry-loaded-with-subsidies-3659513.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/South-San-... While basically matching your numbers for the new routes, the article also mentions that the effective subsidy for the older routes is about $15 per ride. I guess part of the question is how to distinguish "start up costs" from "operating costs".

Recoil42 13y ago
> Your numbers struck me as surprisingly high. It seems hard to believe that running a ferry across the bay with 100 passengers can cost $10,000. I still found it hard to believe. So I took sfgate's numbers, and did the math. 100,000 riders a year? That's only ~270 riders per day. For an assumption of 8AM to 10PM, it isn't a hundred passengers going across the bay in per hour – it's a grand total of 19. And for that, they built a $26M ferry terminal? No wonder it costs so much.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  They only commute to and from work, with a total of 280 seats (two 140 seat ferries), figure two trips south, and two trips north, so 4 trips a day, a carrying capacity of 560 commuters, getting 279 would be a utilization of about 50% (that seems a bit optimistic)
  - rdl 13y ago
    I looked at this a lot because my GF works in Brisbane, CA and we live in Oakland. It takes 1.5h to commute by land public transit (and is crowded); going via ferry takes a similar amount of time (but, no flexibility on time), but SSF to anywhere is hard. There's a shuttle for Genentech at the ferry, but going the 2 miles from the ferry to Brisbane is kind of a pain still. The easiest thing is actually still to drive through SF traffic across the bridge in the morning, even as a non-HOV, which is a pretty clear failure of transit (most of the fault is Brisbane, which is just a horrible place in general). BART and then Uber from 16th st or something seems like the only semi-viable non-self-drive option. Pretty expensive, though.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Nice article, it says basically that a 140 seat Ferry is $8M. The compares to about $300K for 60 seat bus, or at most $900K for equivalent seats. I could not track down a solid dataset for operating cost per mile for a large vessel. I know that in general it is quite high because it takes much more energy to push through the water than it does to roll on freeways (and even less to roll on rails). Further there are weather systems that would keep a boat at the dock but a bus or train could drive through. Of all the transportation modes trains are the most economical to operate on a marginal cost basis but have the high startup and operating costs from the essentially dedicated infratstructure. It would be interesting to see if they could build a floating train somehow (trust me, this is the kind of project that gets you promoted at Google :-) basically float a monorail track between up and down the bay such that you got the energy/operating costs benefits of rail setup without the huge land/tax/easement costs of a land locked rail line.