"Ferries are looked upon as being as helpful as rowboats..."

Some transit advocates question ferry plan

View of Manhattan from

 a commuter ferry. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

By Dana Rubinstein Feb. 3, 2015

On Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio issued a rousing call for more ferry service in New York City.

"We need to right this wrong, to open up great possibilities for our people, to take places that were isolated and felt isolated, and give them opportunity and connection," he said during his second State of the City speech at Baruch College in Manhattan.

By de Blasio's estimation, New York City is a water-bound metropolis whose rivers and harbors are underutilized resources. It's a view shared by politicians representing water-proximate neighborhoods from the Rockaways to Red Hook to Brooklyn Heights.

“For lots of New Yorkers who live in fast growing waterfront communities without enough transit options, new service is very—or ferry!—good news," State Senator Dan Squadron, who represents lower Manhattan and portions of the Brooklyn waterfront, said in a statement. "New service will also provide another option when existing networks are compromised, as happened during Hurricane Sandy."

Transit advocates, however, greeted his pronouncements tepidly.

"In the transit community that I am a member of, ferries are looked on as being as helpful as rowboats," said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney at the Straphangers Campaign.

Jeffrey Zupan, a senior fellow for transportation at the Regional Plan Association who's a bit more ferry-positive than Russianoff, said that while it was a good thing to explore how best to further deploy ferries, caution is also in order.

"The idea of running ferry service has always been attractive ever since ferries stopped running, when we built all those bridges and tunnels," Zupan said.

But by his count, since 1986, ferry operators have tried roughly 70 different ferry routes to Manhattan, and only about 20 are still in place.

That's because most ferries move relatively few people and generally require more per-rider government subsidy than subway and bus operations.

In fact, the de Blasio administration made that very argument last year, when it decided to cancel ferry service to the Rockaways because it cost too much per rider.

Now, the administration is looking to resurrect ferry service to the barrier peninsula, and also establish new routes to South Brooklyn, Astoria, the Lower East Side, Soundview, and perhaps also Coney Island.

Using a 2013 study conducted by the Bloomberg administration, de Blasio officials said it would peg fares to the price of a subway ride, and that the endeavor would require $55 million in capital investment and $10 million to $20 million in annual subsidy.

Given ridership estimates of 4.6 million, that means the city anticipates spending between about $2 to $4 in subsidy per trip.

That's within the range of the city's current subsidies for the East River Ferry, where rides (unlike the mayor's proposed routes) actually cost more than the subway.

That 2013 report said that the city subsidized the East River Ferry at "$2.22 subsidy per passenger trip," while the M.T.A. subsidized subway fares at 62 cents per ride and local buses at $2.20 per ride. Express buses cost $14.82 in subsidy per ride.

The Rockaway ferry service, which the de Blasio administration cancelled last year, cost the city between $25 and $30 per ride.

"One of the things we think the city should do is experiment on some of these routes they think have a better chance to be successful, but state before hand that this is an experiment, and that if it doesn’t work, we’re going to drop it," Zupan.