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Fury over Ferries
As Bay Area freeways crawl along at a snail’s pace, some frustrated commuters dream of being whisked back and forth across the Bay on high-speed ferries, and the Water Transit Authority (WTA) is considering their use as part of its overall ferry expansion plan for the Bay. But recent experiences with high-speed ferries in Washington and British Columbia have stirred up concerns that fast vessels could cause more problems than they will solve. In Washington, ferries had to slow from 34 to 12 knots along Rich Passage after residents filed a lawsuit complaining that wakes from the fast ferries were eroding their shoreline. After the ferries were forced to slow down, travel time on the ferries increased by 10 minutes. In Vancouver, says Teri Shore with Bluewater Network, which heads up the Clean Ferry Coalition, huge, expensive fast ferries caused such wake problems that three had to be taken out of service and are still sitting on the sidelines.
Shore cringes at the possibility of as many as 120 boats crisscrossing the Bay from every imaginable point (the recommendation of the Blue Ribbon Task Force being studied as Alternative 1 in the project’s Environmental Impact Report). Shore worries about the impacts of higher speed vessels on marine mammals, whales, even rafting ducks and water birds.
"We're worried that more boats will increase overall wake and other problems," says Shore. "There will be more vessels on existing routes, plus there will be new routes. Even if there are only 70 ferries (Alternative 2), that is a lot more than the 14 commuter ferries that currently ply the Bay." Shore worries that new, faster ferries—traveling at speeds over 35 knots per hour—will worsen both wake problems and air quality. (Ferries currently cross the Bay at 20 knots or less.) Bluewater Network is pushing for low wake, low wash hulls, and even the use of hybrid electric ferries.
According to the WTA, there is no proposal as of yet for fast ferries. "To be a fast ferry, you have to go over 30 knots," says Heidi Machen, Public Affairs Officer for the Authority. "We don’t need that kind of speed on some of the shorter routes. Fast ferries are just part of what we’re looking at; our plan is for an expanded ferry system. So far, we’ve identified several issues: some are perceived; others real." Machen says the WTA is conducting wake studies and working with a consulting firm to create a wake wash measurement protocol, a standard by which the effect of various wakes can be judged.
"High speeds do not always equal high wake. What causes a problem in one place doesn’t necessarily cause the same problem elsewhere," says Mary Frances Culnane, WTA’s Manager of Marine Engineering. "In Rich Passage, the problems were largely caused by the interaction between the waves and the manmade obstacles built along the shoreline to protect million dollar homes."
Culnane says the WTA will "not be proposing ferries that are any faster than those currently in operation on the Bay." She says a minority of the proposed boats will fall into the 35-knot speed category, and that these will be used on longer runs—such as Vallejo—that already operate fast ferries. According to Culnane, WTA has found that high-speed boats don’t, in and of themselves, increase wake. Counters Shore: "It is a scientific fact that large catamaran fast ferries do have different wake characteristics than slow, monohull ferries." Shore cites studies done in Norway and Sweden, as well as the ferry debacles in Seattle and Vancouver.
The WTA has held public scoping sessions for the draft EIR, and a draft is expected to be released this August for public review. WTA will produce a final EIR, as well as an implementation and operations plan, for the region's Metropolitan Transportation Commission by September 12. In December, the plan will be submitted to the state legislature, and then completed by next summer.
Contact: Teri Shore (415)544-0790 ext. 20 or Heidi Machen (415)364-3189 LOV
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