Similarly if an emergency happens aboard a ferry the passengers are going to look to the first people they see in a uniform they see which may very well be a galley worker. If a fire breaks out in the kitchen, the galley workers need to know what to do too. It isn’t as if they can evacuate and call the fire department. I’m pretty sure the requirement is set by the Coast Guard and not the union.

Furthermore anyone working on the ferry while it is underway needs to be under the direct authority of the Captain. While this may be long standing maritime tradition it is also a good idea.

There is also the DHS requirement that anyone working on a ferry have a transportation worker card. This means you can’t just hire anyone, but have to stick to people who people who can pass the background check.

A galley on a ferry is a very different environment than a coffee stand out in Bellevue. You can’t hire the same people, nor give them the same level of training.

As for the issue of some ferry workers “gaming” the system, the state is working with the union to change the work rules around the travel pay. However in defense of the ferry workers, the travel pay is only for relief shifts. Paying for travel time to a location other than the usual duty station is common in private industry as well. The issue is that “picks” for relief shifts are based on seniority rather than who the closest worker is, which allows for abuse as a worker can pick the shifts furthest from where they live. There are two ways to fix this: either eliminate the travel pay, or pick based on distance rather than seniority.

Give the union bashing a break. Naturally the millionaire who owns King-5 would rather “report” on out-of-control union members than on a $500 billion Wall Street meltdown. Keep it real- there are brokers on Wall Street who have cost the public more in a single day than the ferry system spends in a year.

The economic impact of that, even just in terms of the state budget would be far larger than any savings from sending WSF shipyard work out of state.

I must admit I’m rather sad none of the Steel-Electrics were saved and the Vashon, San Meteo, and all of the Wood-Electrics were lost.

So much maritime history in the PNW, but sadly so little of it has been properly preserved. Thankfully we still have the Virginia V, the Skansonia, the Kirkland, the Thea Foss (ok, not a ferry but a historic vessel I have a rather personal connection to), and a handful of other vessels of various sorts that have been preserved.

Imagine the fleet WSF could have? Well, they basically lack one boat to sit in harbor as a back-up boat, so I imagine the fleet would look pretty much the same.

Well the shipbuilding need for the ferry system is a bit more dire than just needing a backup boat. For one Pierce County wants their ferry back eventually. So that makes at least two boats needed.

The Rhododendron is over 60 years old and can only be used on a few runs due to Coast Guard regulations. So that makes 3 boats needed.

The Evergreen State Class is all over 50 years old and also needs to be replaced sooner rather than later (though they’ve been good runners for their age). They are also a bit small to sub in on any of the bigger routes like Bremerton, Bainbridge, Kingston, Anacortes, or even Clinton. They are only really useful on the Vashon run and as inter-island boats in the San Juans. That makes 6 boats needed (the replacements are probably going to be 144 boats).

The Supers are over 40 years old and will need to be replaced in the next decade or two. They are definitely showing their age. That makes 10 new boats needed. Again these will likely be 144 class boats.

After that the two older Jumbo’s will need replacing. Though they’ve been good enough runners that their lifetime might be able to be stretched a bit, but they won’t last forever.

I suppose the situation might be helped some if WSF could buy used ferries from elsewhere. But this assumes there are suitable ferries for WSF’s needs available used. WSF likes double-ended boats with “pickle fork” bows and no car deck doors.

The big issue for WSF isn’t so much how much it would cost to buy new boats from Washington shipyards but the legislature being unwilling to replace the WSF capital budget after eliminating the MVET. That seems to have finally changed with the crisis brought on by the sudden forced retirement of the Steel-Electrics. Hopefully this isn’t just a short term three boat only shipbuilding order and the legislature will fund enough orders for the 144 boats to keep up with the fleet replacement needs.

Note that the Jones Act (Federal legislation) requires that the ferries be built in a US yard. The chances of changing that any time soon are slim to none.

The built in Washington requirement is something imposed by the legislature on WSF after the Super class was built. Yes it is somewhat “protectionist” but the state is allowed to do that just the same as Clipper Navigation can buy only from yards in Washington if it wants to do so.

Having ferries built and maintained in Washington does carry some advantages. For one it saves transit time for annual inspections or any other work the ferries might need. For another it saves travel time and expense for WSF and shipyard personnel. A further advantage is it employs Washington residents, puts their payroll into the local economy, and the shipyard pays B&O, property, and sales taxes.

I’m willing to bet that any savings on building ferries out of state, or doing the maintenance out of state, would more than be offset by other added costs and the loss of tax receipts.

For example I might get up to Pt. Townsend more than once every few years if I had options other than a really long bus ride from Bainbridge or dragging a car with me to get there.

In any case, we’ll see if the POF boats will work out now that the issue has been tossed to the counties and private operators. King County thinks it can make the numbers work for at the very least the Vashon and West Seattle runs. Kitsap has a number of ideas, but it is an open question if they can make any of the runs pencil out (though it would be a good idea for them to work out some sort of joint operation arrangement for Southworth/Manchester with King County). Jefferson County, Pt. Townsend, and the chamber up there want some sort of direct POF service to Seattle, but it remains to be seen how serious they are about it.

So far we just have the King County ferries, but that has much to do with King County being the only operator so far with a dedicated funding source.

It can be done. Somehow the Bay Area and New York have passenger-only boats that compete successfully with road and rapid transit crossings. True both areas have a lot more people in their CBDs and a lot more people on the other side of the water, but I think a look at the economics of POF service in both regions could be somewhat instructive on what should be possible on the Sound.

As for food service, see what I wrote to Bernie above. The issue is more WSF thinking it can charge the same fees and get the same cut of sales as land side situations like an airport or stadium. I suspect the best thing for WSF would be just to bring the food service operations back in-house.

The two big attractions of the POF boats are greater speed (still sucks fuel compared to a displacement hull, but supposedly the modern cats aren’t nearly as bad as a planing monohull), and the ability to run routes that might not have all that much demand for auto crossings. This is for places like Vashon, Southworth, Indianola, Kingston, or Pt. Townsend to Seattle.

Sodhexo was willing to renew the contract for the entire system but WSF wanted too much money and felt they could do better by re-bidding the contract. So far that hasn’t worked out so well as WSF could only find companies interested in bidding on some of the more profitable runs and even then some of the companies who won the contracts have pulled out because they weren’t making any money. This is even with drastically reducing the offerings and service Sodhexo used to offer. I believe some routes haven’t had any food service at all since Sodhexo pulled out.

I’m not sure why WSF has such unrealistic expectations of how much they should be able to charge the food service contractors, but that seems to be the issue cited by pretty much all of the companies who’ve tried to offer food service on the ferries. Either WSF needs to charge the companies less or get rid of the IBU requirement for the galley workers otherwise there is really no way the contractors can make money.

I’m told by a retired ferry worker I know that the state used to make far more money off of the food service onboard back when it was all in-house. That makes a certain amount of sense as there is no middleman who has to get a cut of the cash flow.

As for the length of the route, any cross-sound route is going to have enough time to at least sell a few coffees. The Bremerton route even with the fast boats still took around the same time as the Bainbridge crossing on the auto ferries. Pt. Townsend to Seattle would take even longer. As for the issue of people eating all over the boat, that happens already. People break out food they take with them on every ferry I’ve been on POF, water taxi, or auto ferry. On the big auto ferries it is common for people to take food from the galley all over the passenger cabin. The booze is the only thing that has to stay in the galley area by the rules.

As far as I know the dining space is very much part of the total passenger capacity on the auto ferries. If the boat gets full you are going to have to sit in the galley even if you don’t really want to.

Paying twice, TWICE what the boat is worth. Really? C’mon….

With respect to historic preservation, this ties in with a comment I was going to make on the poor old Kalakala which is a pet project of mine that seems to be eternally languishing. I have a lot of sympathy for Steve Rodriguez but I do wish we could preserve this boat – it is so integral to the history of our region and state and someone needs to step forth to help preserve it.

A subsidy by any other name is still a subsidy.

Now, for one kind of person, this may work. A person who moves here to get a job, and intends to leave soon, may not have any connections or values associated with Puget Sound- and may not care. To that person, personal values are simply a matter of keeping costs low and revenues and resale values high.

Most of us, thankfully, are not like that. We pay extra at a coffee joint to help keep them in business, donate to a local charity, make a point of voting to tax ourselves for good schools even though our children aren’t in them at the moment, and so forth.

And, while you may consider it realistic to say that “all that” should be done voluntarily through charities, we actually have a representative government here and there are things we can do to maintain what we consider to be values. Naturally there’s all sorts of argument about what those things are, but King County spends 1% for art and (so far) nobody’s taken that close enough to the Supreme Court for Justice Roberts to legislate from the bench.

Now, for all I know, commenters here are high-minded sorts who devote most of their spare time to preserving our local customs and historic buildings. But if that’s the case, they might consider how building the boats here preserves the dignity of our workers while producing a product designed for Washington. There are reasons those boats all look pretty much alike, and it’s not because they got a great deal on green paint.

We’re not talking about tax breaks for corporations (which of course Washington has no history of.. just ask Boeing) but instead requiring goods and services be purchased in state.

Do you have a rich uncle? You seem to have no concept of budgetary constraints.

Just wondering.