New ferry sailing schedule designed to cut delays, frustration in San Juan Islands

||| FROM KOMO TV NEWS |||

Island life may be idyllic, but getting to and from the San Juan Islands from Anacortes takes planning for both locals and tourists.

“It was beautiful, and the people were wonderful,” Lisa Davis told KOMO News after arriving back in Anacortes from Friday Harbor.

She said her husband, John, chose the San Juan Islands as just the right place to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary. They flew up from California and used an airport shuttle to get them to and from the ferry terminal in Anacortes.

“Everything worked great. The ferry guy helped bring out my bags,” said Davis. But it doesn’t work like that every day. It’s been very frustrating for locals and tourists to get to and from the San Juan Islands by ferry for the past several years.

Several people who live in San Juan County told KOMO News they have been very frustrated with the number of canceled sailings.

“Nearly 3,500 inter-island sailings. Yeah, because of lack of crew,” Dave Smith told KOMO News while getting a coffee in the passenger terminal at Anacortes. He and his wife were headed back home to Friday Harbor, where they’ve lived for 34 years, after he spent a night in the hospital.

“It’s a great place to live, but the ferries need to get their act together,” said Smith.

Now, for the first time in more than a decade, Washington State Ferries (WSF) is rolling out new sailing schedules for the Anacortes-San Juan Island route.

“The current schedules have not been revised in 10 to 15 years and are so out of date that it causes delays and frustration for all involved,” Steve Nevey, the head at WSF, wrote in announcing this new change.

WSF Director of Planning, Customer, and Government Relations John Vezina told KOMO News that the agency is fully aware of the frustrations and hardships that come when a boat is late or can’t sail because of a staffing shortage or maintenance issue.

“We want our customers to be able to travel where they want to travel at the time they expect to travel,” Jason Rogers, the Planning Manager for WSF told KOMO News.

Rogers said those expectations and getting their workers off on time to get home, are the two big things they took into account in designing new schedules for the San Juan Islands.

WSF spent almost two years working on this process, engaging the public, including a 26-member community task force.

“We’re required by law to do a lot of community engagement and there’s a lot that goes into it,” Nevey added. “Like there’s school bell times, there’s things you wouldn’t have even thought of.”

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