||| FROM THE URBANIST |||
As the Washington State House and Senate work toward a compromise two-year transportation budget ahead of the final day of the legislative session on April 27, the future of a key mobility option for many Puget Sound residents is fully up in the air.
State financial support enables supplemental service on both the King County Water Taxi’s Vashon Island route and Kitsap Transit’s Bremerton fast ferry, a direct response to reduced Washington State Ferries (WSF) service in those areas. While the transportation budget approved by the House early this month includes funding to continue that supplemental service, the state Senate’s budget does not.
Without those dollars, four daily round trips every weekday between Vashon Island and Downtown Seattle would likely be cancelled, along with seven weekday round trips between Bremerton and Downtown Seattle — and all Bremerton fast ferry trips on Saturdays outside of the peak summer season.
The justification behind the Senate’s move is the planned restoration of pre-pandemic ferry service across the state’s domestic routes by this summer. Those service increases will return a third boat to the Vashon-Fauntleroy-Southworth route and a second boat to the Seattle-Bremerton route. Governor Bob Ferguson announced the move earlier this year, to be accomplished by postponing planned electrification work on the state ferry fleet that would have reduced vessel availability. Those car-ladened ferries are significantly slower than passenger fast ferries, however.
The Senate’s transportation budget, which includes a plan to raise $10.2 billion in new revenue over the next six years, would actually increase costs on transit agencies like King County Metro and Kitsap Transit by forcing them to pay a new vehicle registration fee and to pay for the use of state toll facilities, after being exempted for decades. But the $6.3 million to keep the supplemental passenger ferry service running didn’t make the cut.
“It was always intended to sort of be a stop gap until we got the service back up to the standard,” Senate Transportation Committee Chair Marko Liias (D-21st, Edmonds) said at a press conference in early March. “This budget is really focused on making sure that our mainstay Washington State ferry service is healthy and strong and sustainable, that we’re investing in the crew, that we’re investing in the vessels.”
The Senate budget does include funding to provide additional passenger ferry service for two months during the FIFA Men’s World Cup in 2026, a clear nod to the utility of the service overall, but otherwise the additional trips would sunset later this year.
Not everyone is down with going back to a bare-bones passenger ferry network, as evidenced by the House budget. One of the biggest advocates for retaining that funding is Representative Greg Nance (D-23, Bainbridge Island). Earlier this year Nance introduced the Mosquito Fleet Act, which would have expanded the number of local jurisdictions that are able to create passenger ferry districts in the hope of creating new routes. That bill didn’t make it across the finish line and failed to receive a vote in the Senate transportation committee, even after a state-funded grant program to directly fund service was stripped out.
Nance told The Urbanist that the supplemental service actually proved to be a great proof-of-concept, illustrating the benefit of increased foot ferry service.
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