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.”
Jim Cameron
Jim Cameron (contributed photo)
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?
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See also: Jim Cameron’s Transportation Column: Don’t Blame the Truck for I-95 Congestion
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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, 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.
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Jim Cameron has been a Darien resident for 25 years. He is the founder of the Commuter Action Group and also serves on the Darien RTM. The opinions expressed in this column are only his own. You can reach him at CommuterActionGroup@gmail.com
Republished with permission of Hearst CT Media.