||| FROM ED ANDREWS for COMMUNITY WATER TAXI |||
The Community Water Taxi has developed a survey for folks to share information about their use of the San Juan County inter island ferry.
Here are links to the survey:
- English: https://bit.ly/3tPmcoq
- Spanish: https://bit.ly/48QJZU0
There are 28 questions. Some are conditional, so you may not need to answer them all. It should take about 6-8 minutes to complete. The questions will cover demographics, impacts to medical access, business/employment and personal travel, as well as a few summary questions.
The results of this survey will be shared with anyone who provides their email address in the survey (not a requirement to take the survey), the public, and County and State governments to help present a more complete picture of the current crisis in San Juan County and islanders’ specific ferry service needs.
If you have any questions, please reach out to us at communitywatertaxi@gmail.com.
For more information, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
We thank you for your thoughts and time.
Ed Andrews, Community Liaison & Public Relations
Tom Bridge, USCG Captain, Island Water Taxi & Rupali Barge
Carey Eskridge, Executive Director of the Orcas Chamber of Commerce
Justin Paulsen, Community Advocate
Sandy Playa, EV Land Transportation Liaison
The Community Water Taxi is a group of concerned island residents looking for solutions to an inter island walk-on water taxi service within San Juan County when Washington State Ferries cannot perform this need.
20 IN SUMMARY Anything else you’d like to add?
“The need for an alternative walk-on source for inter-island travel for locals is obvious. The need for more tourism from Bellingham is not. It’s easy to see where this is going. We have enough tourists. Please don’t make this a regular part of the routine that ‘s leading us towards over-tourism. “
Well, since it is currently a private business, maybe preference to islanders for medical/dental/veterinary appointments and work on other islands – and a sliding scale fee structure could be able to be worked out- but so far, this seems like a service for those who can afford it; much as flying in small planes is. I get how expensive it is to run a regular water taxi service. It won’t be cheap. Maybe there could be some kind of grant program to help out fixed income and low to no income folks, as well as workers traveling back and forth for essential income.
Once you get government monies for anything, though, the chances of tailoring this to fit the needs of everyone diminishes substantially. The county could get sued for ‘discrimination’ against the wealthy (by law now, you can’t – and I don’t believe it was the poor or middle class folks who helped effect that trend or changing laws to support it). I’m not sure it would be allowable to charge fares according to income (sliding scale) – even voluntarily, once you involve government. Since I-696, everything that had a sliding scale fee has been challenged in courts, and the well-monied have won, and have been very convincing to people who don’t research what it means to lose that much revenue for the state. I don’t know how wise it is to expect the County to pick up the slack; that just means more local government bloat, IMO – and the only way they seem to think it can be solved is… MORE over tourism.
Before anyone jumps on my case for daring to bring up income disparity or over-tourism and its effects…
I don’t hate the rich. The people in power for whom there will never, ever be enough money – they piss me off. Those buying up all the real estate everywhere as profiteering ‘investments’ are the problem. Too bad greed can’t be regulated anymore. It disgusts me that such a tiny percent of all the people own the world and call all the shots for people worldwide. It’s a top-down psychotic and sociopathic non-sustainable soul-killing, ecocidal system.
I don’t hate tourists; they aren’t the ones promoting over-tourism. They are caught in the same snares that we are – just a different side of the same coin (greed and lack of imagination or creativity on the part of the greedy – except how to get even richer and use up or own more irreplaceable resources – like water).
It will be interesting to see how this water taxi thing plays out. I’m glad that they are providing solutions for some people who need to get to their medical appointments and their jobs. They are doing something, and that is commendable.
If tourism from Bellingham is part of the plan, then I agree with Michael Johnson that we don’t need to be hard-selling yet more over-tourism or filling the shoulder seasons with more of it when there’s no affordable housing for workers as it is.
I’d rather see the ferry issues get fixed – or else competition opened up again so that creative solutions might be found. I love the ferries. I love riding them. I’m sad to see such decline on all levels.
The microcosm IS the macrocosm – and vice-versa.