Guest Opinion | It’s long past time for Council to start hollering at WSF

||| FROM ALEX MCLEOD |||

Everyone knows by now that the Tilikum, our interisland boat, stopped running Friday morning, cutting off the ability for school kids and workers and others to move among the islands. Yet it took three days for WSF to switch to the emergency winter weekend schedule to restore at least some of the interisland service, albeit at the expense of mainline service.

I was one of many caught up in this service disruption, stuck on Lopez Friday afternoon not knowing the Tilly was down, watching the fog-delayed afternoon Anacortes-Shaw-Orcas boat sail by without being asked to stop, then waiting until 6:45 for a boat to Anacortes. Luck changed there because the 6:30 to Shaw-Orcas also was running very late, enabling to me to reach Shaw by about 8:30.

I sent a note to Jim Corenman, the chair of the county Ferry Advisory Committee,the next morning, asking why WSF hadn’t quickly adjusted its mainline schedule to account for the lack of inter island service. Jim responded that we should all “be a bit patient” with WSF because it’s dealing with a lot right now: an unprecedented (and unconscionable) maintenance backlog, crew retirements, difficulty hiring and training new crew and, soon, expected additional crewing problems due to the vaccine mandate.

As a former chair of the county’s FAC, I know how difficult dealing with WSF is, and I respect Jim’s years of trying. But it just keeps getting worse. WSF largely ignores the FACs now, forcing all communication not through its various operations managers — the ones with the most specific route and vessel knowledge — but through its legislative liaison. And with the exception of former council member Rick Hughes, the County Council has shown virtually no concern about the impacts of the county’s steadily deteriorating ferry service on county businesses and residents.

Having listened to WSF management’s litany of excuses for the growing list of problems, I used the Public Records Act to see what, if anything, WSF had actually done to respond to the known retirements of many crew members, the longstanding difficulty of hiring and training new crew (despite living wages) during COVID. I found virtually nothing of substance and certainly no sense of urgency.

What has that meant to island residents? Well, for starters, there were the 51 cancelled sailings over just five days up here last month The day after the Tilly broke down, the first Saturday morning sailing to Lopez and Friday Harbor and back was cancelled because of staffing issues. And today, the first day of the weekend winter schedule, one of the island boats was delayed an hour by a shortage of crew. In his note back to me, Jim said he expects everything to only get worse when the vaccine mandate kicks in and if any boat — any boat, anywhere in the WSF system — has new mechanical problems.

WSF’s management failure has hit other routes, too, with several already running one boat short. Cancelled sailings have become routine. And a second increase in ticket prices this year just kicked in.

It is way past time for the County Council to start hollering about the abject failure of WSF management. There is no reason to expect anything to improve with this management continuing to shuffle along, doing nothing except hoping it survives until 2024 when a new ferry might come on line and meanwhile making excuses about retirements, COVID and old ferries. Would this accomplish anything? Hard to say.

But it is long past time for the council and the FAC to let the governor know that WSF isn’t working at all and that San Juan County wants him to make sure it doesn’t continue to drift as it is. And it’s well past time to let island residents know someone cares.