Day 885 of Kingston Held Hostage.

Greetings,

In this issue:

1.    WEB SITE UPDATE
2.    KINGSTON UPDATE
3.    SAD NEWS – PASSING OF THE FERRY GODMOTHER
4.    CHINOOK FERRY FOR SALE - NOTICE
5.    MESSAGE FROM THE NEW HEAD OF WSF
6.    REVIEW – 2008 LEGISLATIVE SESSION
7.    FOOT FERRY NEWS AND REVIEW
A.    Kitsap Wins: Funding Secured for Several Projects in State Budget
B.    Appleton’s Ferry Bills Make It Into Transportation Budget
C.    Aging boats trouble Washington ferry system, nation’s largest
D.    Largest Ferry System Hits Rough Waters
E.    Ferry riders will be asked to speak up
F.    Focus on ferry boat trips
G.    Ferries Director to Visit Area Communities
H.    Surprise! Transportation budget includes extra Port Townsend-Keystone ferry runs
I.    No new state money requested for cracked, clogged Seattle stretch
J.    Upbeat WA lawmakers OK budget, adjourn 60-day session
K.    Porn, spy cam alleged on ferries
L.    A departing swing-district Democrat takes a few swings
M.    Kitsap waits for its ships to come in
N.    Sound Transit ridership rose 12.5% in 2007
O.    Council hesitant to extend TheBoat (Honolulu)
P.    Give TheBoat time to build reliability (Honolulu)
Q.    Lack of panel appointees holds up new ferry project (San Francisco)
R.    xx
S.    BC Ferries Leaks Money, Riders
T.    Life Is a Gravy Boat at BC Ferries
U.    All Aboard the Vomit Comet (BC Ferries)
V.    Ferry Goes Down, Quality of Service Rises (BC Ferries)
W.    Ferry sinking report sparks storm
X.    TSB report makes victims of victims all over again (BC Ferries)

Welcome new members and e-mail subscribers.  See the end of this message for a summary of what the Kingston Express Association is all about.  To unsubscribe reply to this e-mail with “unsubscribe” at the top of the message.
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1.    WEB SITE UPDATE

The following is new and added to the web site: www.kingstonexpress.org

(nothing new to the web site this week).

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2.    KINGSTON UPDATE

The legislative session for 2008 ended last week, with a couple nice surprises for ferry riders.  A review of the session is below.

The Kingston Express Association will host a table at the Kingston Open House at the Kingston Middle School on Thursday, March 20 at 7-9 pm.  Stop by and pick up a “Ferries are Marine Highways” button.  You can wear it when you go to the WSF meeting in Kingston on the 25th (Kingston Cove Yacht Club – 6:30 to 8:30 pm, meet the new head of WSF).

The Open House annual event is a great way to see what is going on in Kingston, and meet with a variety of government agencies, non-profits, clubs and more.  North Kitsap Commissioner Steve Bauer will probably say a few words to kick off the event.  The Port of Kingston will probably have a table with some of the Commissioners.  Be sure and stop by and thank them all for backing the Kingston foot ferry project.

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3.    SAD NEWS – PASSING OF THE FERRY GODMOTHER

Ferry riders across Puget Sound are saddened by the death of Marilyn Omey, from Vashon Island.  She was a strong voice for ferries, and was one of the founders of the Ferry Community Partnership, a grass roots group that has been very effective at influencing legislation in recent years.  I will always remember Marilyn’s determination and caring.  A real inspiration.  She will be missed.  A news story is below.

=============================
Islanders mourn passing of Vashon’s ‘ferry godmother’

Vason-Maury Island Beachcomber – March 12, 2008
By Leslie Brown

Island political powerhouse Marilyn Omey died in her Dockton home on Wednesday, March 7, after a battle with lung cancer. She was 63.

Omey was a six-year veteran of the Vashon-Maury Island Community Council and an avid advocate for the transportation needs of the Island she called home. Tributes written by friends and family last week wondered how Vashon would fare without its “ferry godmother.”

“She was my mentor, my friend and my inspiration,” said Kari Ulatoski, who co-chairs the community council’s transportation committee with her father Joe.

She took on the position last December when Omey couldn’t continue because of her illness. Ulatoski said Omey first asked for help with her chair position last summer, and the relationship evolved into a mentorship over time.

Omey recently retired from the community council, but only when physical limitations forced her to do so. Omey’s friends and family agreed politics were her passion. She worked as a social worker, mostly for the state Department of Social and Health Services, before retiring in 1998.

“She’s always been interested in politics,” said Jennie Hodgson, a member of the community council. “She was a determined person and focused.”

Omey’s husband Bill Lunbom, a longtime Islander, recalls the way he met the young Marilyn Omey.

“I was running a body shop (in Burton) and she came in to get an estimate to get some work done on her car, and I took a liking to her and asked her for a date,” Lunbom said. “She always liked to say that ‘I got a husband, but I never got my car fixed,’ which is not true, but I let her say that.

“Somewhere she has tucked away the estimate.”

Although he was not as politically active as his wife, he said he helped her as much as he could.

“I was always proud of Marilyn,” Lunbom said. “She knew what she was going to say, and she usually hit the mark. I can’t imagine that she was ever off base. She knew politics, and she was for the people and doing what was right for everyone.”

He described his wife as “very honest, straightforward, caring and genuine.”

“One of our favorite things was having dinner out at Sound Food, back at the days when Sound Food was the place and you had to have reservations,” Lunbom said. “Also we were members of Vashon Allied Arts and went to most of the plays. She really enjoyed that.”

He said she was a member of a feminist women’s choir in Tacoma from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, which was something she was very proud of.

The couple traveled throughout the Northwest, often visiting museums since Omey was a bit of a history buff. In 1994, Omey, who had never travelled east of the Mississippi, took “the trip of a lifetime,” a two-week vacation to England. She made sure to visit the ancient site of Stonehenge, Lunbom said.

Omey was born on April 22, 1944, and raised in Kent. A 1962 graduate of Kent Meridien High School, she attended Washington State University and participated in debate and Model United Nations there. She was named WSU’s outstanding 1966 graduate in political science.

She went to work for the state Department for Social and Health Services after graduation and earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Washington while working.

Omey was born to Horace and Marjorie Omey and is survived by her husband, her mother Marjorie Omey of Vashon, brother Ronald and his wife Joanne of Buckley and brother Eugene and his wife Jan of Bellingham. She also leaves eight nieces and nephews and their children, numerous cousins and her many longtime friends in the Kent, Seattle and Pierce County areas and on Vashon.

Although Omey smoked for 20 years, she quit 25 years ago, friends said.

Omey was a founding member of the fledgling Ferry Community Partnership, a new effort to link up ferry-dependent communities throughout the Puget Sound and thereby strengthen the voices of these small regions, often easily overlooked when budget time comes around but tightly knit by their common bond to the public marine transportation system.

Islander Vickie Mercer conducted a survey of Vashon businesses with Omey in 2003 when murmurings from on high showed that legislators might be thinking of closing the Fauntleroy ferry dock.

“She was a feisty little gal,” she said. “She was a smart lady.”

The pair conducted a total of four surveys together, Mercer said.

“She wanted to show how proposed changes would affect the community economically,” she said.

“She had been working in Olympia … to try and have legislation written that would mandate that economic impact studies be required any time a change in service was proposed. Marilyn and I used to go and lobby together.”

She said Omey became infamous in Olympia.

“She now has a reputation that when she walks into a room and legislators see her face they walk away because they know she’s pressing issues that are difficult to deal with,” Mercer said.

Omey organized the ferry summit that took place Dec. 7, 2007, in Bremerton, a gathering of 140 ferry advocates, legislators, staff from Washington State Ferries and the Department of Transportation and ferry-riders from various communities throughout the Sound.

“Everybody who was anybody relating to ferries was there,” said Alan Mendel, chair of Vashon’s ferry advisory committee. “Unfortunately Marilyn’s not going to be here to see it follow through.”

He said she was someone who saw the needs of Vashon residents clearly, but also took into consideration the needs of the rest of the Puget Sound.

“She was a great supporter of Vashon Island and our residents and our concerns and interests, although she also saw the bigger picture,” he said. “She was a bundle of energy, she was a go-getter. She got everybody around her energized, and she put in a lot of years.”

Ulatoski said Omey was an “essential and integral part” of getting legislators to pay attention to the needs of ferry-dependent communities.

“It was an excellent first step in showing how we can all act together as a group,” she said.

Omey spearheaded an effort to make buttons reading “Ferries are marine highways,” encouraging other Islanders to be as public in supporting ferry politics as she was. Her role on the community council also had a populist bent.

“She just did a superb job (on the community council),” said Jim English, community council president. “She was always concerned for the welfare of her fellow Islanders. She always went the extra mile. She took on the role of overseeing the board — she was very organized, very committed, very much a lady.”

He said it was Omey’s persistence that got the community council to formally lend its name, by way of resolution, to the Ferry Community Partnership.

“I think the Ferry Community Partnership has the potential to bring us together,” English said. “It is bringing together the communities to look at issues.”

He said Omey’s personality was very warm and loving, and that she cared about the Island at large, “from the council standpoint as well as the ferry standpoint.”

“She will be missed,” he said, “She was the ferry godmother, and in our case she was the council godmother.”

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4.    CHINOOK FERRY FOR SALE - NOTICE

Below is an e-mail sent to “interested parties” regarding the sale of the WSF foot ferry Chinook.  Note the opportunity to observe the vessel when it is in drydock March 17-April 4.  It might be worth checking out just to see what happens when something sits at the dock for 4 years without being used.  It looks like WSF is serious about selling the Chinook, but will hold onto its sister vessel, Snohomish, through the Hood Canal bridge closure next year.

e-mail
Date: March 10, 2008
To: Blue and Gold Fleet
City of Vallejo CA
Compass Maritime Services
Four Seasons Marine Services
Intrigue Group
Kingston Express Association
Nichols Brother Boat Builders
Seaworthy Systems

From: Washington State Ferries

================
Interested Parties:

You may have previously expressed interest in Washington State Ferries’ (WSF’s) plan to sell the passenger-only ferry M.V. Chinook.  Some names have been added for direct notice of the project.

WSF has re-listed the Chinook on e-Bay, from March 4-14, 2008 (see attached copy).  The minimum bid amount is the same as the first e-Bay listing ($4.5M), pending an updated Inspection Report on the fair market value (FMV) of the vessel, due in about a week.  At that time, WSF will consider whether to re-list the vessel on e-Bay with a lower minimum bid amount, assuming the updated FMV is less than the 2006 FMV.  WSF may also consider other marketing alternatives.

Note: Subject to prior sale, WSF intends to drydock the Chinook from March 17 – April 4, 2008 in Puget Sound, Washington for its annual inspection, followed by additional dockside from April 4 – 18, 2008 at Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island, Washington, all to maintain the USCG Certificate of Inspection.  In such event, bidders are welcome to schedule a site visit while the vessel is in drydock or dockside.

The sister vessel, the M.V. Snohomish, will remain in WSF’s fleet until at least Spring of 2009 to help mitigate service reductions on the Port Townsend - Keystone ferry route.    
If you wish to be removed from the list of Interested Parties for this project, please advise.

Tim McGuigan
Director of Legal Services & Contracts
WASHINGTON  STATE  FERRIES
2901  Third Ave.   Suite 500
Seattle, WA  98121 - 3014

Phone:    206. 515. 3601
Cell:     206. 915. 4718
Fax:      206. 515. 3605
E-mail:   mcguigan@wsdot.wa.gov

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5.    MESSAGE FROM THE NEW HEAD OF WSF

Below is an e-mail circulating last week from the new Assistant Secretary of Transportation in charge of Washington State Ferries, David Moseley.  It seems he will be sending out weekly e-mail reports.  Great idea.

=================
Dear CAG,
Below (and attached to this email) you will find WSDOT
Ferries Division New Assistant Secretary David
Moseley’s message following his first week on the job.
Please feel free to forward onto anyone who may be
interested. Take care!
Joy Goldenberg
Washington State Ferries
Communications Manager
206-515-3411

Ferry Weekly Update – March 7, 2008

Dear Colleagues,

As I have mentioned to many of you it is my intention
to provide our staff, colleagues and stakeholders with
a weekly report at the end of each work week. As I
complete my first week as Assistant Secretary for
Ferries, this is the first of those reports. As you
can imagine this is a “work in progress” and will
evolve and, hopefully, improve over the coming weeks
and months. I’d be very interested in any suggestions
or comments folks may have about this effort. So here
we go.

1. Outreach

A major effort this week was to begin the process of
outreach to the ferry community. Toward this end I
conducted twelve separate interviews with radio and
newspapers to outline my view of the major issues
facing the ferry system and to discuss priorities.

I also had the opportunity to meet with many
legislators who are members of the Ferry Caucus to
meet each other and to begin the process of exchanging
ideas and suggestions on how to work more closely
together and to move the ferry system forward. I very
much appreciate the time members of the Ferry Caucus
provided me during a very busy period of the
legislative session.

I had the opportunity to meet with WSF headquarters
staff to introduce myself, discuss issues affecting
the ferry system and our approach as we move forward.
I will be meeting terminal and vessel staff as I ride
the boats and attend meetings in ferry-served
communities.

On my first day I also had a meeting with
representatives of our bargaining units to begin the
process of establishing a productive working
relationship with our labor partners.

Finally, Secretary Hammond and I also meet with
Mukilteo Mayor Joe Marine and a Mukilteo City Council
member regarding options on the Mukilteo terminal and
other local ferry issues.

2. WSF Workgroup on JTC and Transportation
Commission studies

WSF has a work group specifically dedicated to
providing information and data to assist the JTC and
Transportation Commission in various studies they are
conducting prior to the 2009 legislative session.
This is a critical effort and WSF has a major
responsibility to provide timely information and data.
This will be one of the major priorities this year
and I was able to receive a preliminary briefing on
the work to date.

3. Service restored on Pt. Defiance/Tahlequah

Service was restored to the Pt. Defiance/Tahlequah
route on Thursday morning. On Thursday service was
provided by the Hiyu and the Rhododendron was placed
back into service on Thursday evening. We are very
aware of the inconvenience and frustration this caused
our Vashon Island customers but are pleased that we
were able to restore service on Thursday.

4. Biodiesel Research and Demonstration Project

WSF has joined partnership with the Puget Sound Clean
Air Agency and others to test biodiesel in the marine
environment. The Issaquah will be fueled with
biodiesel this weekend and will begin testing on
Monday. We will be placing posters on the vessel
which indicated that the ferry is being run on
biodiesel and directs people to the Website for more
information.

5. Another Ad agreement and campaign

WSF has achieved another advertisement campaign
agreement with Lufthansa Airlines. Lufthansa ads will
be displayed at Colman Dock and the
Seattle/Bainbridge, Edmonds/Kingston and
Mukilteo/Clinton routes. This is the fourth ad
agreement we has reached in only three months with
revenue of $164,650.

That’s it for this first installment. I’m sure there
are many improvements we will be making to the weekly
update in the coming months. Please feel free to
provide suggestions and ideas.

David

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6.    REVIEW – 2008 LEGISLATIVE SESSION

The 2008 legislative session adjourned March 13.  Things are a little clearer for the Port of Kingston and the foot ferry project.  It was the first time the Port of Kingston was in front of the legislature, and their reception seemed to be very warm, although it cooled a little when it got around to asking for money.  House Bill 2730 to allow Port Districts to provide ferry service in Puget Sound sailed through the legislature (unanimous in the house, and by 41-6 in the senate).  Our 23rd district Rep. Christine Rolfes was prime sponsor.  Many thanks are due Christine for her hard work for a Kingston foot ferry.  The Governor is expected to sign.  The bill requires WSF to collaborate with the Port of Kingston on use of their docks and facilities (like at Pier 51 in downtown Seattle), and makes the Port eligible for grants from the Passenger Ferry Account.  The Port also received an appropriation of $750,000 in the form of “tolling credits”.  The credits aren’t cash, but can be used to satisfy the 20% local match requirement for federal grants.  Kitsap Transit received $2.7 million in tolling credits, implying they plan to spend $13.7 million for foot ferries.

The Port did well this year with the legislature, and it also made headway with the Governor’s office.  The Governor has not made a decision on the Port of Kingston business plan.  The Port has been asked to provide additional information and modify the plan in a couple areas.

A word search of the three 2008 appropriations bills (general fund, capital projects and transportation) revealed one big surprise.   The legislature appropriated $8.5 million for the Passenger Ferry Account for “…long-term costs of capital improvements in a business plan approved by the governor for passenger ferry service.”

I’m not sure what to make of it. “Passenger Ferry” also applies to WSF car ferries.  However “business plan” implies the Port of Kingston and King County foot ferry plans.  Although it could also mean a business plan for Washington State Ferries, once they develop one.  It is does not say who would benefit from the $8.5 million, and when the $8.5 million would be spent. Why not just spell out which projects, exactly?
My spider sense is tingling and it says this bill is artfully worded to get $8.5 million cash into the hands of King County ferry district (but no cash this year for the Port of Kingston, only tolling credits) while disguising the decision and timing. My hunch is the state will quietly drop $8.5 million into the coffers of the King County ferry district immediately after the November election. The Governor does not want to be seen funding King County foot ferries exclusively, for service only inside King County, with no funding for anyone else.  The good news is more funding is possible after the sale of the WSF Chinook, Snohomish, Skagit and Kalama foot ferries.  So good news overall.  More funding overall for foot ferries it seems.

It is also interesting to see all the non-WSF ferries being funded by the state, including a WSDOT ferry in eastern Washington (Keller ferry, completely free, meaning NO FARE!!!), Wahkiakum County (Westport ferry), Pierce County (Anderson Island ferry) and Skagit County (Lummi Island ferry).  All of those ferry communities should be on the hook somehow in order to back a WSF makeover, but somehow I doubt they feel much connection to the larger WSF problems, nor any urgency whatsoever to help fix and fund WSF.  Extracts from the appropriations bills are below.  It is interesting to see all the funding for studies of this and that related to ferries.  Amazing to see the product from the ongoing studies, which have precious little useful hard data and cost information, it is mainly politicized fluff and mush.

In an amazing resurrection, some of Rep. Sherry Appleton’s ferry bills survived, but as part of the transportation appropriations bill, rather than as stand-alone bills.  Representative Appleton is the other Kingston legislator in the House along with Christine Rolfes, and both are on the House Transportation Committee.  The parts of one bill that was in dispute concerned whether the Transportation Commission “should” or “shall” consider commuter discounts in setting tolls, or something like that.  They compromised on even weaker language “may”.  A small beer dispute on the fundamentals, but one that has big symbolic importance, and was an important show of strength from its sponsors concerning their ability to move ferry legislation.  The other bills that passed concerned longer expiration dates for fare media, and allowing two cars to use one frequent user card for one ferry sailing.

Because of their success of sorts with the bills, the sponsors will have a stronger hand this year in negotiating over much bigger issues over a WSF makeover/revised business plan.  The 2009 legislative session could wind up seeing big changes at WSF and how ferries fit together regionally, or maybe not much will change. Its hard to predict. The odds are maybe 50-50 that there will be a new Governor in 2009.

Bills to allow Kitsap Transit to create a foot ferry only sub-district did not seem to pass.  The bill would enable new districts that would have allowed only a part of the county to vote for foot ferries, while the entire county would pay the sales tax. (HB 3036 - Establishing high-capacity transportation corridor areas.  SB 6667 is the companion bill in the Senate.)  The bill was changed by the House from its original version to make it clear foot ferries are included as a high-capacity corridor area.

According to the legislature’s web site, the Senate bill did not make it out of the Senate Transportation Committee, and the House Bill made it out of the House Transportation Committee, then died in the rules committee, never coming to a vote by the entire house.
It is interesting that prime sponsors for both bills were the chair of the House and Senate Transportation Committees, yet the bills didn’t get far.  Testifying for the bills were Kitsap County Commissioner Josh Brown (House, February 4), and Kitsap Transit executive director Richard Hayes (Senate, February 5). Kitsap Transit has been telling people they plan to try again with another sales tax increase for foot ferries ballot measure in 2011.

A word search in the appropriations bills for “Kingston” also turned up funding for the Carpenter Creek restoration project, something funded in 2007 legislation.  The Carpenter creek estuary phase 1 (South Kingston road) received $637,000.The legislature makes a nod towards public-private partnerships for ferry terminal development and appropriates $300,000 for a consultant to develop a plan.

$150,000 is appropriated to the Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council for a telework study.  It is partly an example of a private firm (that runs KRCC) lobbying for a grant that then funds work by the same private firm.  $155,000 is appropriated to the Kitsap Health district for newborn home visits.  $212,000 is appropriated for a study of a four year college in Kitsap County.  $65,000 is for a pilot program of full-day kindergarten in Bremerton.
An extremely vague earmark is $5 million for Bremerton for “Bremerton downtown economic revitalization projects”.  Another $900,000 goes to “KCR Bremerton community services center $900,000”.  Plus $1 million for the Kitsap mental health services residential facility.  Plus $1.1 million for “Kitsap SEED”.  Kitsap SEED has been put on hold by the Bremerton Port Commissioners.  Earmarks also include $4.5 million appropriated for the Bremerton tunnel project.  That sure is a lot for Bremerton, including some very dodgy and wasteful projects, like SEED and the stupid downtown tunnel.  The tunnel will whisk ferry riders away, hiding from view the best part of the downtown.

=========================
(extracts below from 2008 Washington State Supplemental appropriations bills: general fund, capital projects, and transportation – go to www.leg.wa.gov and search for bills No. 2765, 2878 and 2687 to read the bills, totaling hundreds of pages listing what is funded.)

“The appropriations in this section are subject to the following
conditions and limitations: The department of transportation shall
provide up to $2,700,000 in toll credits to Kitsap transit for
passenger-only ferry service and up to $750,000 in toll credits to the
port of Kingston for the purchase of a passenger-only ferry vessel.
The number of toll credits provided to Kitsap transit and the port of
Kingston must be equal to, but no more than, a number sufficient to
meet federal match requirements for grant funding for passenger-only
ferry service, but shall not exceed the amount authorized under this
section. The department may not allocate, grant, or utilize any state
or state appropriated or managed federal funds as a match to the
federal grant funding on projects to which these toll credits are
applied.

Passenger Ferry Account–State Appropriation . . . . . . . $8,500,000

$8,500,000 of the passenger ferry account–state appropriation
is provided solely for near and long-term costs of capital improvements
in a business plan approved by the governor for passenger ferry
service.

$902,000 of the motor vehicle account–state appropriation is
provided solely to Wahkiakum county for operating and maintenance costs
of the Puget Island-Westport ferry.

$2,370,000 of the motor vehicle account–state
appropriation may be used for county ferry projects as set forth in RCW 47.56.725(4).

… Vashon Island and Seattle ferry terminals - modify the
passenger-only facilities. [funding appropriated from a large pot of money, with other projects listed].

$287,000 of the motor vehicle account–federal
appropriation and $11,000 of the motor vehicle account–
state appropriation are provided solely for the department to determine
the most cost efficient way to replace the current Keller ferry.
Options reviewed shall not include an expansion of the current capacity
of the Keller ferry.

$300,000 of the multimodal account–state appropriation is
provided solely for the department to hire a consultant to develop a
plan for codevelopment and public-private partnership opportunities at
public ferry terminals.

$1,914,000 of the multimodal transportation
account–state appropriation is provided solely to provide
passenger-only ferry service. The ferry system shall continue
passenger-only ferry service from Vashon Island to Seattle through June
30, 2008. Ferry system management shall continue to implement its
agreement with the inlandboatmen’s union of the pacific and the
international organization of masters, mates and pilots providing for
part-time passenger-only work schedules.

The department shall allow the use, by two separate drivers,
of fare media allowing for multiple discounted vehicle trips aboard
Washington state ferries vessels.
[One of Sherry Appleton’s bills that was modified and made it into law.]

While developing fare and pricing policy proposals, the
department may consider the desirability of reasonable fares for
persons using the ferry system to commute daily to work and other
frequent users who live in ferry-dependent communities.
[Another one of Sherry Appleton’s bills that was watered down but made it into state law.  There was quite a battle over this language.]

The department shall sell the M.V. Chinook and M.V.
Snohomish passenger-only fast ferries as soon as practicable and
deposit the proceeds of the sales into the passenger ferry account
created in RCW 47.60.645. Once the department ceases to provide
passenger-only ferry service, the department shall sell the M.V. Kalama
and M.V. Skagit passenger-only ferries and deposit the proceeds of the
sales into the passenger ferry account created in RCW 47.60.645.

$4,500,000 of the motor vehicle account–federal
appropriation is provided solely for cost increases on the SR
304/Bremerton tunnel project.

$150,000 of the multimodal transportation account–state
appropriation is provided solely as a grant for a telework pilot
project to be developed, administered, and monitored by the Kitsap
regional coordinating council.

$155,000 of the general fund–state appropriation for fiscal
year 2009 is provided solely for the Kitsap county health district’s
home visits for newborns program. In order to receive these funds, the
county health district must commit an equal amount of funding for this
purpose.

$85,000 of the general fund–state appropriation for fiscal
year 2008 and $127,000 of the general fund–state appropriation for
fiscal year 2009 are provided solely for the board to prepare a program
and operating plan for a higher education center in the Kitsap county
area.

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7.    FOOT FERRY NEWS AND REVIEW

More lazy reporting below about the troubles at WSF.  The Associated Press leads off a national news item with “Starved of money for nearly a decade, the nation’s largest ferry system has hit rough water.”   Actually, the ferry system has money, the legislature appropriated $350 million for four, 144 vehicle, new boats in 2003, and authorized them in 2001.  Here we are in 2008 and there are still no boats, not even a design.  If those 4 new boats had been built like they were supposed to most of the current troubles wouldn’t exist.

The current ferry problems are not caused by being “starved for money for a nearly a decade”.  Rather, the current ferry crisis is directly caused by WSF non-performance for nearly a decade.   The part-time, non-expert legislators did their jobs and appropriated the funds.  The experts and full timers in the executive branch blob (Washington Transportation Commission, WSF, WSDOT, Governor’s office, et al.) are the ones entirely responsible for this critical and crushing failure.  If I had to finger one person in particular, it would be at the top with “the ferry guy” on the Washington Transportation Commission, which was responsible for hiring and overseeing WSDOT (and WSF) when things were going haywire over the years.

In the news is the new head of WSF on a tour of ferry communities.  Also below, a yucky story with the latest from WSF; spy cam voyeurism in the restrooms, and internet porn surfing in the pilothouse.

Plus, news stories describe Representative Appleton’s ferry bills, most of which somehow made it through the short session, an impressive feat of legislating.

News below about the transportation budget, with additional runs for Port Townsend. A foot ferry critic complains saying the King County ferries to Vashon Island will have far more impact than the barges to the Glacier Northwest mine on Maury Island.

A story outlines the surge in mass-transit ridership in the region, driven by high gas prices.  Year-over-year ridership up 13% at Sound Transit in one year, up 7% at Metro King County, and up everywhere else.  Not at Kitsap Transit though, which declined 2%.  Don’t expect anything to change as long as we have the undemocratic, and probably illegal, governance scam forming the Kitsap Transit board.  Kitsap Transit runs a lot of wasteful stuff, like the ACCESS bus program, which is basically a fleet of SOB (single-occupancy-buses).

A front-page above the fold story in the Seattle Times describes plans, or the lack of plans, to fix I-5.  Fixing I-5 will be the next big central Puget Sound transportation priority to be fixed, after the 520 bridge and Viaduct issues are resolved.  The story provides a good perspective on the current situation re: regional transit priorities.

A story summarizes the closing of the legislative session, with reports that legislators “bailed out” the ferry system.  Actually, there was no new spending for ferries, just re-allocation of existing appropriated funds.  Rep. Patty Lantz, from Kitsap County, is retiring and offers some candid comments, including saying House Speaker Frank Chopp is “now in the proverbial [role of] herding cats within the … caucus.”  The Kitsap Sun has a piece summarizing the new spending in Kitsap in the 2008 budget.

An article in Washington CEO magazine outlines challenges in the Kitsap economy, and concludes its fate is tied to ferry service.  New condos in Bremerton are only half sold and some will be going up for auction.  Kingston taxpayers are on the hook through county loans, etc. for luxury condos on the Bremerton waterfront.

Foot ferry projects in the Bay Area may be held up because a new five person board has yet to be appointed for the “San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority”.  The new agency replaces the now-defunct Bay Area Water Transit Authority and its 11-member board.  Governor Schwarzenegger will appoint 3 people to the board.  The other two appointments will be by the head of the Senate and the head of the Assembly.  California is on the right track by getting rid of incompetent local politicos and making the transit board smaller and its members a direct report to the state government, precisely what is needed in Puget Sound.

In Honolulu, the city council and mayor are divided over extending a commuter oriented foot ferry “TheBoat” for another year.  The cost would be about $4 million for one more year.  It now carries about 300 passengers per day (150 round-trips per day).  The city transportation manager says they are very positive and that they’ll be very satisfied if the ridership is a little above current levels.  Subsidy costs are about $125 per round trip passenger per day.  The city is applying for more federal grants. The ferry uses the same two 149 passenger ferries formerly leased indirectly by Kitsap Transit for Bremerton-Seattle service; the Melissa Anne and the Rachel Marie.

Also last week, a report was issued by the Canadian government into the sinking of the Queen of the North.  Two were killed when the BC Ferry sank like the Titanic.  Two years later, the report fails to pinpoint a cause, causing some to demand an inquiry with more teeth.  A BC resident sends the following:

“What were the ex lovers doing for 14 minutes?  One of them – the woman — lacked the required quartermaster credentials but was at the helm.  The required third senior person on the bridge was off having supper or something.  The ship was on autopilot, and obviously properly programmed to make the necessary course correction.  There is some suggestion watertight doors required to be closed, were not.  Meanwhile on the bridge:
lights were turned down low
instruments were dimmed
the music was turned up so loudly it was picked up on radios monitored from ashore.  Maybe during the mayday?
Then one of them, the guy, noticed trees going past the windows.  Did he say Holy ****?
It seems at the last minute in response to his order, the quartermaster tried to turn hard port, but was probably countermanded by autopilot which she did not know how to turn off.
Transportation Board Canada says what they said to each other is none of our business.  A lover’s quarrel?  The union representing the watchkeepers says they cannot be expected to testify because they have been mentally traumatized by the whole experience. The public is not buying it.”

A series of articles scorches BC Ferries for declining ridership, higher costs, and more.  Complaints include elitist lounges for the privileged, and that the on-time statistics improved only because one chronically late boat, The Queen of the North, sank.  Included are colorful descriptions about a “floating pukefest” and a ferry ride that included a call to “abandon ship”.  With higher fares planned to cover the much higher spending, one wonders if BC Ferries is in a “business plan death spiral” with higher fares driving down ridersip and decreasing net revenue, making cost recovery of the debt and the new spending impossible.

One report says BC Ferries is “leaking money and riders” and
“[BC Ferries] expected to lose money in the quarter, but it lost about five times as much as it did during the same period last year. At least part of the story is a fall in the number of vehicles and passengers.”

“I’m not surprised at all the trend is going downwards,” said NDP ferry critic Gary Coons. “Fares are just skyrocketing. The minor routes are feeling a huge crunch. Somewhere along the line it’s going to crash.”

“Fares have increased by as much as 55 per cent since 2003 on some routes, will rise again April 1 and are expected to double again by 2012.”
and
“Coons has visited 29 ferry-dependent communities in recent months to hold town hall meetings and discuss ferry service. He’s heard a lot about the service and the rising cost, he said. “It’s a pretty horrific thing happening in the smaller communities.”

“The government needs to fund the system better, he said. The cost should be shared among all British Columbians, he said, the same way improvements to the Sea-to-Sky Highway or Kelowna’s William R. Bennett Bridge are. “It’s a marine highway. They have to treat it the same way as other transportation links.”

Note that because BC Ferries is now a “private” company, board meetings are closed, and documents and financial information are now kept from the public.  According to the report:

“The company has debt of at least $750 million, taken on since the B.C. Liberals privatized the former Crown corporation in 2003. The privatization, however, guards the company from having to say exactly how much it owes, said Coons. “I’ve heard it’s closer to 1.5 or two billion they’re in debt. That’s a real concern.”

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A.    Kitsap Wins: Funding Secured for Several Projects in State Budget

Items of legislation relating to Kitsap County that survived in the state’s final budget:

• $155,000 for the Kitsap County Health District in matching funds for the district’s well-baby program.

• $212,000 for a study and operating plan for a higher education center in Kitsap County.

• $100,000 for a floating lab at the Poulsbo Marine Science Center.

• $150,000 to the Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council for a pilot program to increase teleworking in Kitsap County.

• Up to $2.7 million in toll credits to Kitsap Transit for passenger-only ferry service and $750,000 in toll credits to the Port of Kingston to obtain a vessel.

• Ferry commuters can use the same pass for two drivers on the same boat.

• $1 million to help move a Kitsap Mental Health facility from Burwell Avenue to East Bremerton.

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B.    Appleton’s Ferry Bills Make It Into Transportation Budget

Kitsap Sun - March 10, 2008
Ed Friedrich

Two ferry bills sponsored by Rep. Sherry Appleton, D-Poulsbo, are proving the adage that legislation is never dead until the session adjourns.

House Bills 2718 and 2453, which had been presumed killed a couple times, have re-emerged as provisos in the supplemental transportation budget.

HB 2718 urges the state to keep fares reasonable for commuters when changing pricing policies. It was passed by the House 95-0, but it never got a hearing in the Senate Transportation Committee.

HB 2453 allows for a car-and-driver pass to pay for two or more vehicles on the same ferry trip. Currently, there is a half-hour lockout period. The bill received a public hearing in the House Transportation Committee but didn’t advance. After deadlines for moving bills had elapsed, it was tacked on to the House’s proposed transportation budget as a proviso, then stripped out by the Senate.

During the process of hammering out a compromise budget, House Transportation Committee Chairwoman Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, got the bills added as provisos. A third one — HB 2455 — didn’t stick. It would have extended the expiration date on frequent-user coupon books from 90 days to 120 days. The House had passed it 95-0 and the Senate gave it a public hearing before it stalled.

“We held our ground,” Appleton said. “Judy was wonderful. She went in there and said, ‘We need this. This is the right thing to do.’ She didn’t give up.”

Sen. Phil Rockefeller, D-Bainbridge Island, said he and Sen. Harriet Spanel, D-Bellingham, helped to persuade Senate Transportation Committee Chairwoman Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, to include the provisos in the conference budget.

“I’m just delighted she has agreed to do it and I think she deserves credit for recognizing this is important to these communities,” he said.

The transportation budget will probably be approved on Tuesday, Appleton said. The session ends on Thursday.

“In the end I think it’s going to be good for ferry commuters,” Appleton said.

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C.    Aging boats trouble Washington ferry system, nation’s largest

Seattle P-I - March 10, 2008
Associated Press

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Wash. — The Washington ferry system, the nation’s largest, is a symbol of the Northwest.

The vessels recall maritime history and figure in movies and TV shows, such as “Grey’s Anatomy.”

But beneath the green and white paint, aging ferries are rusty, old and unreliable. Commuters have been frustrated as boats have been taken from service for repairs.

State Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond says relief is on the way in the form of 13 new boats to be built over the next 20 years.

The Washington ferry system hauls 24 million passengers each year, about a quarter of all U.S. ferry passengers.

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D.    Largest Ferry System Hits Rough Waters

Associated Press – March 10, 2008
David Ammons

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Wash. (AP) — Starved of money for nearly a decade, the nation’s largest ferry system has hit rough water.

The ferries that cruise Puget Sound and surrounding waters have become symbols of the Pacific Northwest, recalling its rich maritime history and figuring prominently in movies and television shows such as “Grey’s Anatomy.” But beneath their cheery green-and-white paint scheme, the aging ferries are rusty, old and unreliable.

Some boats have been yanked from service for repairs. Routes have been canceled and schedules thrown off. Washington state commuters are frustrated.

“We have a love-fear relationship with the ferries. It’s our highway and there’s always massive uncertainty,” said Pete Gillis, 38, as he caught a ride to Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, en route to Port Townsend, north of Seattle.

The system’s problems date back to 1999, when voters repealed a vehicle-registration tax that provided much of the money to build, maintain and operate ferries. That caused fare increases, cuts in service and delays in maintaining and replacing boats.

“We had this aging, deteriorating fleet that was ignored and put on the back burner,” said Democratic state Rep. Sherry Appleton, whose district west of the Seattle mainland includes three ferry runs.

State Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond says relief is on the way in the form of 13 new boats to be built over the next 20 years.

“We’ve allowed the system to limp along, ignoring the long-term consequences,” she said. “We were delaying the inevitable, and now we see the problem square in the face.”

The Washington ferry system hauls 24 million passengers each year, about a quarter of all U.S. ferry passengers. Its 24 vessels range from a tiny boat that links Tacoma to Vashon Island, to a tourist-friendly international run that winds through the scenic San Juan Islands to Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

On upscale Bainbridge Island, thousands of commuters take the ferry to work in downtown Seattle, filling boats that can carry 2,500 passengers on each 30-minute crossing.

For many riders, it’s a pleasant time for drinking coffee and reading the morning paper. Some catch up on work using wireless Internet access. Others just catch a few extra winks.

It’s not cheap, even though the state subsidizes the system. A walk-on passenger pays $6.70 a day — $134 a month, minus commuter discounts. Driving a car onto the ferry costs $11.55 each direction, or $460 a month for 20 workdays.

But many commuters cheerfully swallow those prices, making up the difference on cheaper real estate across the water from pricey Seattle.

Riders interviewed on a recent rainy day appreciate the convenience of the ferries, but they have grown impatient with the service disruptions and with fares that have soared 70 percent over the past seven years.

“We love our ferries — and would love them more if our lives didn’t depend on them so much,” said Phil Herbert, 66, a retired farmer from Port Townsend. “It’s taking longer and longer to get places.”

Canceled runs and uncertain schedules also play havoc with truckers, especially those hauling perishable products, forcing them to use longer land routes or shift to more distant ferries.

The problems can hurt tourism and business, too. When auto ferry service was canceled to Port Townsend, business plummeted in the Victorian village, which serves as gateway to the vast Olympic Peninsula. Some islanders grouse about being unable to attend concerts or other events in Seattle because of poor nighttime ferry service.

Commuter ferries are often newer boats with comfy lounges and serving wine, sushi, microbrews and designer coffee. But riders on the less-frequent routes endure decades-old boats that are creaky, dingy and prone to breakdowns.

After the 1999 tax vote, lawmakers eventually came up with $350 million to build four new “superferries” that could carry 144 vehicles and 2,500 passengers.

But five years later, those vessels are still on the drawing board because of legal battles with shipbuilders and political squabbles over the size of the boats.

Meanwhile, the fleet gets older. Some boats date to the 1920s, and others are more than 40 years old.

Just before Thanksgiving, state officials pulled the four oldest vessels out of service, fearing they were no longer safe after inspectors found corrosion and cracks in the hulls.

The Legislature approved spending $100 million to build three replacements that can carry 50 to 80 cars. Design work is also under way on three more superferries.

The ferry agency also is being reorganized to repair the system’s battered reputation.

The new ferry chief is David Moseley, 60, who spent most of his career as an administrator for Seattle and other cities. With no maritime background, Moseley was purposely chosen to reform the agency.

“The ferries are not just a Washington state icon. They’re a lifeline for people,” Moseley said.

But Pete Gillis, the commuter riding from Bainbridge to Port Townsend, is among those who remain skeptical.

“People’s faith has really taken a big blow in the last couple of years,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of faith that it will improve.”

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E.    Ferry riders will be asked to speak up

Seattle Times - March 11, 2008

Ferry riders: The state wants to know what you think.

Because of major financial problems and an aging fleet of boats, the state ferry system has hired a firm to conduct a survey to help the state Department of Transportation plan for future ferry needs.

In the 2007 legislative session, lawmakers ordered the state Transportation Commission to conduct such a survey. The purpose of the survey is to gather information from a sample of ferry riders on their travel behaviors and attitudes.

This month, Opinion Research Northwest, a marketing research and consulting firm with a Seattle office, will be conducting the survey, riding on more than 150 randomly selected trips.

Participation in the survey is voluntary. Individual survey responses will be kept confidential and will be used only for statistical purposes, ferry officials said.

The survey is online at: www.wstc.wa.gov/FerryCustomerSurvey/default.htm.

A list of frequently asked questions about the study is online at www.opinionresearch.com/northwest.

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F.    Focus on ferry boat trips

Highline Times - March 10, 2008
Letter to the Editor

I wish to respond to the recent letter from Becky Cox concerning the issue of gravel mining on Maury Island.

Ms. Cox states that the protection of the aquatic reserve adjacent to Maury Island as well as the waters around the island are important to the Puget Sound recovery plans. I agree wholeheartedly with Ms Cox and so does Glacier Northwest.

The fact is that the effects of resuming barging from Maury Island have been thoroughly examined during nearly 10 years of environmental study and review. Six local, state and federal agencies have issued nine permits or letters of concurrence finding that the proposed resumption of mining and barge loading at Glacier Northwest’s Maury Island site will not harm the environment, endangered species, other fish or their habitat.

The League of Women Voters should be concerned with the representatives who are pressing the state to restore cuts in ferry service to the islands. King County is taking over the passenger-only ferry from Vashon Island to Seattle with plans for more runs. Increasing the number of runs will mean many more boat trips on Puget Sound. When Glacier is only asking for one or two more boats a day on the sound it just does not seem right that they are the center of attention from the League of Woman Voters.

When I see the Puget Sound Partnership making efforts to keep the number of ferry runs to a minimum, then I will know that they are serious about saving the sound and not just attacking another big business.

Gregory Duff
North Highline

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G.    Ferries Director to Visit Area Communities

Kitsap Sun - March 11, 2008
    The state Department of Transportation’s Ferries Division has scheduled a series of public meetings in ferry communities to introduce new assistant secretary David Moseley, talk about current operations and discuss a revised long-range plan.

Local meetings will be:

—March 24 at Bainbridge Commons, 402 Brien Drive

—March 25 at Kingston Yacht Club, 25915 Washington Blvd. NE

—March 26 at South Colby Elementary, 3281 Banner Road. SE

—March 31 at Bremerton, Norm Dicks Government Center meeting room, 345 Sixth St.

The meetings, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., will begin with a public comment period.

“I’m looking forward to spending time in the ferry-served communities listening to what our customers have to say,” Moseley said in a prepared statement. “I want to meet face-to-face and have constructive conversations with the people who depend on the services we provide every day.”

At last September’s ferry advisory committee meetings, ferries officials introduced their approach to revising the long-range plan. They’re being guided by Engrossed Substitute House Bill 2358, passed in 2007, which contains specific directives to assess the efficiency and costs of ferry service, and orders several studies that will serve as the basis for forming long-range strategies.

Other rounds of meetings will be held in June — focusing on operational and pricing strategies, and terminal design standards — and October — to present the draft long-range plan and take comments about it. The plan will be finalized before the 2009 legislative session.

For more information, visit www.wsdot.wa.gov/ferries/planning/ESHB2358.

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H.    Surprise! Transportation budget includes extra Port Townsend-Keystone ferry runs

Peninsula Daily News – March 12, 2008
Brian Gawley,

OLYMPIA — The supplemental transportation budget that’s now out of a legislative conference committee and headed to the governor’s desk includes all of the previous North Olympic Peninsula projects, plus a bonus.

The bonus is $357,000 to add two daily sailings of the Port Townsend-Keystone ferry from May 19 to Sept. 8 to help the tourism economy on both ends of the run across Admiralty Inlet.

The route is being served by the passenger-car ferry Steilacoom II, currently being leased from Pierce County through April 2009, after the route’s 80-year Steel Electric ferries were pulled from service in late November due to safety concerns.

“That’s a crucial time period for tourism,” said Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam in a written statement.

“Adding two more runs will not only allow more people to see the beauty of our region, but it will boost the local economy as well.”

Hargrove, along with Reps. Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, and Kevin Van De Wege, D-Sequim, represents the 24th District, which includes Clallam and Jefferson counties and one third of Grays Harbor County.

Highway widening
The supplemental transportation budget includes funding for the $32 million project to widen to four lanes a 2.5-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 101 between Shore Road and Kitchen-Dick Road.

The project is on the state’s 2009-2011 project list.

Project design was scheduled to begin in July 2007 and construction is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2009.

The budget also includes funding for new ferries for the Port Townsend-Keystone route that the state Legislature authorized earlier this session.

The original $100 million funding was reduced to $85 million to keep the state’s costs down in the absence of competition among ferry-building companies, said the legislative staff for the Senate Democratic caucus.

Another $15 million was earmarked for refurbishment of the 41-year-old ferry Hyak, which serves the Seattle-Bremerton route.

Three ferries
In addition to funding construction of a 50-car ferry modeled on the Steilacoom II, the state Department of Transportation also will have enough money to pay for construction of two ferries that carry no more than 100 vehicles.

The first of the 1,200-passenger, 76-vehicle Island Home-class ferries would be built and launched by February 2010, with the second one built in the fall of 2010.

The budget includes another $283 million for three larger 144-vehicle boats to be added to the ferry fleet, which has not had any new vessels since the Jumbo Mark II class MV Puyallup in 1999.

The budget also directs the state ferry system not to hire additional workers for the remainder of the 2007-2009 biennium.

The state ferry system is also directed to review accident and incident investigations involving ferries, allow multiple cars in a family to qualify for multiple discounted trips, and take into account frequent ferry riders when setting fares and pricing policy in ferry-dependent communities.

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I.    No new state money requested for cracked, clogged Seattle stretch

Seattle Times – March 13, 2008
Mike Lindblom

Lane closures last August on Interstate 5 illustrated the need to get moving on a long-overdue rebuild, to fix the Seattle freeway’s eroding surface and unclog its many chokepoints.

But the 2008 Legislature ends today, without an I-5 plan.

Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond didn’t push lawmakers for more money, something she earlier had said she would do. State budgets had earmarked $114 million in gas taxes for the Seattle freeway between 2017 and 2023, but Hammond thought a decade was too long to wait.

“What I want us to do is come up with a good plan, and then what I want to do is sell this to the Legislature,” she said last summer.

Hammond said she still thinks a 10-year delay is unacceptable, but political realities kept her from crusading for I-5 money. “Everyone and their brother was making clear we aren’t getting any more revenue this year, so don’t even ask,” she said.

Lawmakers were preoccupied during a short session with how to apply tolls to the Highway 520 corridor.

Meanwhile, Hammond was busy managing crises during her first few months in the top job. Last fall, she ordered four 80-year-old ferries into dry dock because of rusty hulls. Huge snowfalls required her to oversee repeated closures to clear Snoqualmie Pass.

And studies on how to improve I-5 traffic aren’t done yet. “Until we have that solution, it’s a little half-baked to go to the Legislature and get a one-off decision,” Hammond said.

Not only is the money far off, but leaders have no idea how to raise the $2 billion the Department of Transportation says is needed to tackle all of I-5’s needs, from Northgate to the south city limits.

Long stretches of the freeway, mainly in the North End, are rated “extremely poor” because they are cracking or the concrete has worn down to exposed rocks, DOT says. Traffic jams will likely worsen without some lane improvements, such as making the merges easier near Highway 520, or widening the two-lane section northbound at Seneca Street.

Money shortages

Interstate 5, built in the mid-1960s, is the transportation core of the state, carrying well over a half-million vehicles a day in Seattle alone. Like many roads, it suffered from under-investment in the 1980s and 1990s. In the 2000s, politicians steered money to suburban and rural lane expansions.

Seattle leaders focused mainly on replacements for the Alaskan Way Viaduct and Highway 520 floating bridge, each vulnerable to earthquakes.

Lawmakers approved 14 ½ cents a gallon in new gasoline taxes in 2003 and 2005 to try to move ahead with more highway projects, yet officials say they’ve already run into a $3.8 billion shortage in their 16-year budget.

High gasoline prices mean some drivers are buying less gas than predicted, limiting revenues. Also, the agency guessed wrong in early 2005 about the size of cost increases for construction labor, concrete and steel. Some projects have been delayed two years, Hammond said.

Rep. Mike Armstrong, R-Wenatchee, said in a floor debate that money shortages have already led the state to sell bonds for road projects, so money will only get tighter next decade, making future projects uncertain. “If we have a project funded after 2013 in this budget, I wouldn’t take it to the bank and tell my constituents the project is actually being built,” he said.

Still, most of more than 400 gas-tax projects around the state are getting done, said House Transportation Chairwoman Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island. Examples include freeway widening in Tacoma and Everett.

This year’s Legislature moved money for some projects into the 2020s, because those depended largely on regional taxes that voters rejected last fall: an I-405 widening from Bellevue to Renton, a Highway 509 link to I-5 in SeaTac and a Cross-Base Highway in south Pierce County — all of which were part of the losing Roads & Transit measure last year. East of Snoqualmie Pass, three Interstate 90 projects won’t be funded until the late 2010s.

Tweaking the freeway

Despite the budget crunch, I-5 in Seattle is still on track for $21 million in urgent surface repairs next year — “the tip of the iceberg,” said DOT spokesman Greg Phipps. These include concrete smoothing or replacement in the North End and near the Michigan Street exit.

Another $25 million from the viaduct fund was reserved last year to improve traffic flow on I-5, because future viaduct lane closures will put pressure on the freeway.

One option calls for electronic signs to display reduced speed limits at certain times. For example, if a lane is blocked downtown, northbound traffic speeds could be lowered to 30 mph at Boeing Field, so that cars flow steadily, instead of meeting stop-and-go traffic. Other ideas include sometimes using shoulders as bus lanes, or restriping the express lanes so transit could always have a lane in both directions. Perhaps a “high-occupancy-toll” lane can be created where solo drivers pay to enter a high-occupancy-vehicle lane, Hammond said.

Long term, Clibborn said “I have no idea” where to find $2 billion for I-5.

Hammond said she doesn’t see higher gas taxes as an answer, and the regional car-tab tax in Roads & Transit failed last fall. That leaves tolls on a variety of highways, to be introduced very gradually. “You can’t cram tolling down people’s throats too thick, in a way that isn’t sustainable. You have to take baby steps,” she said.

Whenever leaders or voters provide more money, Clibborn said, projects can always be returned to the fast track.

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J.    Upbeat WA lawmakers OK budget, adjourn 60-day session

Seattle Times - March 13, 2008
David Ammons

Washington lawmakers adjourned their election-year session Thursday night after approving a state budget that juggles fresh spending with grim predictions of deficits ahead.

The fiery budget debate served as a prelude to the fall campaigns for governor and Legislature. And report cards for the 60-day session fell along predictably partisan lines, with majority Democrats calling it a big success and Republicans accusing Olympia of failing to provide leadership on critical issues.

The focus of the closing-day debate was a new spending plan that boosts teacher salaries and myriad state programs while leaving $835 million in reserve. Republicans called the plan a big gamble, but majority Democrats hailed the $306 million addition to the current budget.

Democrats, with their supermajorities in both chambers, easily pushed the budget through the Senate and then the House on largely party-line votes.

Gavels fell at 7:40 p.m., a few hours before the midnight adjournment deadline.

The low-key, low-expectations session was largely consumed by the operating, transportation and construction budgets at a time when the state economy is cooling and a $2.4 billion budget gap is forecast for the next budget cycle.

Lawmakers also authorized tolls as a new method to pay for big-ticket highway and bridge projects, bailed out the ferry system, dealt anew with global warming, expanded rights for domestic partners and responded to recent flooding in southwestern Washington. Education, health care and higher fees also were on the agenda.

An 11th-hour attempt by Seattle NBA basketball supporters to get state help fixing up Seattle’s KeyArena fizzled. Gov. Chris Gregoire said the Senate didn’t have enough votes to pass the Sonics bill. Senate leaders sent the potential investors a letter pledging to study the request, and asked for more time.

The supplemental budget adds $306 million to the state’s current two-year, $33.4 billion spending blueprint.

It includes a 4.4 percent raise for teachers and community college staff, including both a cost-of-living raise and a half-percent catch-up raise, and continues the phase-in of free daylong kindergarten.

Majority Democrats added more money for education, job programs, housing, health care, mental health, storm relief, public safety and environmental programs.

The Senate voted unanimously Thursday in favor of a proposed supplemental construction budget of $118 million, bringing the two-year total to $4.5 billion. The House later added its 95-2 approval and sent it to the governor.

Under separate legislation, lawmakers also are approving $50 million for flood relief projects in the Chehalis River basin and $100 million for school construction and job skill centers.

A day earlier, lawmakers sent the governor a supplemental transportation budget that trims the current $7.5 billion two-year highway budget by about $129 million.

Thursday’s Senate vote on the supplemental budget was a near-partyline 31-18 and the House tally a few hours later was 64-32 after a partisan squabble in both chambers over whether majority Democrats are overspending and setting up the state for a big tax hike next year.

Democrats said their $306 million budget spends at a prudent level that should withstand the economic slowdown. Democrats also said they created one of the largest reserves in modern times.

“We were disciplined, we were prudent and we were frugal,” said Senate budget Chairwoman Margarita Prentice, D-Renton.

Republicans disputed that.

“We’ve got giant storm clouds on the horizon” with Olympia still spending despite a fresh projection of a $2.4 billion shortfall, said Sen. Mike Carrell, R-Lakewood.

“Leaner years are coming,” said Sen. Cheryl Pflug, R-Maple Valley.

Republican budget leader Joe Zarelli of Ridgefield said conservatives don’t specifically object to items tucked into the new budget, just the overall spiral of spending. The state is now spending $1.7 billion more than it will collect in revenue, and that can’t be maintained without tax hikes or big spending cuts, he and other Republicans maintained.

Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, prime author of the operating budget, conceded that revenue growth is slowing but said the Republican “gloom and doom … is unnecessary and inappropriate.”

Almost identical arguments were exchanged in the House, where budget Chairwoman Helen Sommers, D-Seattle, presented her last budget. Sommers, a 36-year veteran of the House and the senior member of the Legislature, is retiring. She was honored with lengthy tributes in both houses.

Gregoire, a Democrat facing a tough re-election battle against Republican former Senate budget Chairman Dino Rossi, praised the session and the budget but said she wished lawmakers had boosted the reserves further. She had requested at least $900 million.
Gregoire and her husband, Mike, attending the closing ceremonies.

The $835 million left in reserve is about twice the historic average in recent years, putting about $446 million into the hard-to-tap “rainy day” account and about $390 million into unrestricted reserves.

The new spending plan includes $17.7 million to pay for an additional half-percent pay boost for public school teachers and community college instructors and staff. That brings the total raise to 4.4 percent for the upcoming school year.

Negotiators rejected the House plan to slow the phase-in of daylong kindergarten. The original idea of adding 10 percent of the state’s pupils every year now will stay on track.

The budget also includes about $6 million in tax breaks. A number of fee increases are incorporated, including $22 million for general government services and $64 million for higher education, mostly tuition. About 266 fee increases are included.

The operating budget is House Bill 2687. The construction budget is House Bill 2765.

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K.    Porn, spy cam alleged on ferries

Employees accused of misusing Internet, spying on co-workers

Everett Herald - March 14, 2008
Scott North

MUKILTEO — Washington State Ferries is investigating allegations a worker on the Mukilteo-to-Clinton route has been using wireless onboard computers in the ferries’ pilot houses to access Internet porn.

Meanwhile, the Washington State Patrol has a separate criminal investigation under way after a surveillance camera was discovered in December, hidden in an employee-only restroom on the ferry Cathlamet, officials said Thursday.

“Both of the incidents have been forwarded to the appropriate authorities and they are in fact-finding or investigation,” said Marta Coursey, communications director for the ferry system.

Each of the cases involved complaints from ferry workers against other crew members and are being treated as personnel matters by the ferry system, Coursey said.

The Internet porn allegations surfaced early this month. Ferry officials removed the hard drives from the pilot house computers on the Kittitas and Cathlamet. The contents of the hard drives are being scanned by computer technicians at Washington State Department of Transportation headquarters in Olympia, Coursey said.

The alleged computer misuse came to light after a labor dispute, according to a source knowledgeable about the ferry system.

A ferry worker refused to take an assignment inside the pilot house, claiming one of the ship’s captains had created a hostile work environment by using the vessel’s wireless connection to view pornography from the Internet, the source said.

Coursey said she could not comment on specifics, and that ferry officials were awaiting results of the hard drive scans.

The surveillance camera investigation began roughly three months ago after one engine room employee accused another of installing the device in a restroom not accessible to the public.

Ferry officials investigated, found the camera and contacted the patrol to investigate. Under state law, a person can face felony voyeurism charges if spy cameras and other devices are used for peeping.

Detectives continue to investigate the allegations and no arrests have been made, State Patrol spokesman Robert Calkins said.

He emphasized that investigators haven’t discovered any evidence that cameras were set up in any restrooms open to the public.

A ferry system employee has been placed on administrative leave while the investigation is under way, Coursey said.

The ferry system has been struggling for much of the past year with bad news.

It began after questions began surfacing about the safety of four 80-year-old ferries.

Service has repeatedly been disrupted since November, when state Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond took emergency steps to retire the 1927-vintage Steel Electric-class ferries because of concerns about hull corrosion.

Since then, the ferry system has struggled to keeping carrying passengers and vehicles, while at the same time trying to meet stepped-up Coast Guard demands for inspection and repairs on the rest of the fleet. That challenge has been complicated further by rough weather damage to the passenger-only ferry Snohomish, and the car ferry Yakima, which was blown into a breakwater while landing in Bremerton, cracking its hull.

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L.    A departing swing-district Democrat takes a few swings

Crosscut.com - March 14, 2008
Austin Jenkins

State Rep. Pat Lantz, D-Gig Harbor, is leaving the Legislature, having chaired the Judiciary Committee longer than anyone. She has many good memories and no regrets, but she wonders if Speaker Frank Chopp and other Democrats running the Capitol have lost their nerve.

The House Democratic Caucus in the Washington State legislature is big and gangly – 63 members strong, nearly twice the size of the Republican caucus. It’s made of Seattle liberals, suburban moderates, rural conservatives, and even a former Republican.

But somehow — be it by iron fist, the power of persuasion, or a combination of both — Speaker of the House Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, commands an uncanny degree of loyalty. The tent might be diverse, but the House Democrats’ intra-party squabbles, personality conflicts, and other dirty laundry are rarely, if ever, aired outside the closed doors of the caucus room.

So when a Democratic member speaks out in frustration and dares to criticize – even indirectly – the speaker and fellow Democrats, it’s a shock. Perhaps even more so when the criticism is leveled by a swing-district Democrat — just the kind of member Chopp works hard to protect — and not a frustrated liberal from a safe, urban seat.

State Rep. Pat Lantz, D-Gig Harbor, the longest-serving chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has announced she will not seek re-election after 12 years in the Legislature. At age 70, Lantz says in a press release, “it is time to turn my full attention to my family – my husband, my three children, and five wonderful grandchildren.”

But as usual, there’s a story behind the official departing words. It begins with these additional words from Lantz: “For me, there’s been a number of disappointments that happened this year.”

The biggest of those disappointments was the failure of H.B. 3095, which passed out of committee but never made it to the floor of the House for a vote. The bill aimed to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. It would have prohibited people who are involuntarily committed to a mental hospital from possessing a firearm. The legislation would also have created an automatic notification system so state and federal gun licensing databases would be updated when a person was involuntarily committed.

“When somehow or another this non-gun bill became a gun bill, I realized that I’d met forces that were quite beyond me,” explains Lantz. She believes opposition from gun-rights groups had a chilling effect on her fellow Democrats.

“Rational thought wasn’t prevailing here,” she says. “It was something else that was a way of consolidating political power or political defenses that forgot that we were here to do the common good, and the common good here was to protect us all from gun violence,” charges Lantz, a lawyer turned lawmaker.

Lantz says the failure of that bill to even get a vote “was the beginning of my – in a form – disenchantment.”

She goes on: “I can’t get over how stupid it was. We haven’t had anything like this, nor will we … for a long, long time, where we were going to genuinely take steps towards making our streets and our cities safer and we chose this route of playing, of listening to irrational outside forces.”

In response, House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, affectionately calls Lantz naïve. “It’s not a lack of a political courage,” says Kessler. “It’s a difference of the different districts and the people who live in those districts.” Kessler represents the rural Olympic Peninsula. “It’s just we have a different culture, and we have different values on some issues, and to say it’s all political is simply not true.”

Lantz’s next disappointment this year was the Legislature’s unwillingness – for the second year in a row — to stop a controversial gravel mine on Maury Island in Puget Sound. “We are nothing if we aren’t Mount Rainier, Puget Sound, and the Columbia River – that’s who we are,” says Lantz, referring to Washington state.

“And to not recognize the travesty and betrayal of trust with allowing someone to bulldoze one of the islands, just demolish a feature of this thing we hold in trust, completely shatters my faith in my fellow legislators to identify the right thing to do.” Lantz believes politics trumped stewardship in the case of Maury Island.

Again, Majority Leader Kessler disagrees. “Not only [did] we not have the votes on Maury Island and that gun bill that she wanted, we had a lot of no votes, so it wasn’t a close call.” Kessler says the Maury Island issue boils down to whether it’s fair to “change the rules midstream” for companies trying to do business in Washington.

Lantz’s third major disappointment was Speaker Chopp’s refusal – also for the second year in a row – to take up a “Homeowner’s Bill of Rights” to protect against shoddy construction. “You can get a warranty for a toaster. Shouldn’t you be able to get a warranty for your home?” asks Lantz.

Under pressure, the speaker, on the third-to-last day of the session, issued what he called a “three-part” proposal for addressing home construction concerns. It includes studying whether homeowners should have more access to the courts to address grievances with builders.

For all of her frustration, Lantz says her relationship with Speaker Chopp has been “very, very close” since he rallied to the cause of building a new Tacoma Narrows Bridge with public, not private, funds. Lantz is generous in her praise of Chopp. “I have felt loyal, devoted, respectful, in awe of his political power and impressed with how — more often than not — he’s just right-on on the issues. He’s a brilliant strategist and visionary thinker.”

But Lantz thinks that as Chopp’s majority in the House has grown, there’s been a paradigm shift. She says he’s “now in the proverbial [role of] herding cats within the … caucus.” And she thinks he’s failed to use his political capital and political acumen to pass key pieces of legislation that would have benefitted the public. Lantz calls these “lost opportunities.”

Chopp declined the opportunity to respond to Lantz’s criticism.

As she prepares to leave the Legislature, Lantz – declaring herself an “elder” — says her words of advice for Chopp and fellow lawmakers are the following: “Don’t forget your soul, and I don’t say it just to Frank, I say it to everybody sitting out there. … Operating in this environment from a core values system and a vision is what will … give you success.”

Despite her recent disappointments, Lantz describes her career in the Legislature as “fabulous” and says she’s leaving on a good note and with a sense of accomplishment. Besides the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge, she’s especially proud of education reform over the past decade. She says she wouldn’t trade a day of her legislative career. And she still has faith that the legislative system usually finds a balance somewhere in the middle of vexing policy issues.

Lantz says the pinnacle of her time in Olympia came on her 70th birthday in February. Her husband held a surprise party at the house Lantz rents in Olympia during session. Gov. Chris Gregoire, Chopp, and Lantz’s judiciary committee staff were among the attendees.

“I just felt so completely blessed. And that night was when I told my husband this is it, why shouldn’t I know when it’s time to go out totally on top?”

As an aside, Majority Leader Kessler says Speaker Chopp desperately sought to convince Lantz to run again – Democrats don’t want to lose that important swing seat. “The speaker has been asking and begging, he’s taken her out dinner, he’s taken her and her husband out to dinner, he’s gotten on his knees, he’s done everything to ask her to please run again,” relates Kessler. “And this time she really just felt like, ‘Listen, I need to go to the next step in my life and I don’t want to do this again.’”

Kessler adds that, “Frank has finally let go.”

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M.    Kitsap waits for its ships to come in

Washington CEO magazine - March 14, 2008

The county’s housing market has slowed. Sales of existing homes fell nearly 24 percent, and home values dropped 2.5 percent. (Both right in line with state averages.) Last week, the owner of some of those new condos announced plans to slash prices and put them up for auction. City leaders are putting a brave spin on it, arguing that it’s better for the city to have the condos filled, rather than empty, but it’s still a discouraging sign, given that the city is on the cusp of a boom, not the middle of it.

There are really two different Kitsap County economies. Bainbridge Island is in effect just another King County suburb, filled with affluent professionals (like the “White-Bearded Bainbridge Architect” in Pemco Insurance’s current “We’re a lot like you” ad campaign) who commute by ferry to office jobs in downtown Seattle.

And then there’s the rest of Kitsap County, which is pretty much a company town. Only Thurston County, home of the state bureaucracy, has a higher percentage of public-sector employees. But nearly 17 percent of the Kitsap workforce draws a federal (that is, Navy) paycheck. (Statewide, 2.3 percent of the workforce is federal.) Add in state and local government workers, and 32.4 percent of the civilian labor force in Kitsap County is in the public sector. That does not include some 6,000 actual uniformed Navy personnel stationed at Naval Base Kitsap’s various facilities, nor the private-sector contractors who work for the Navy. A 2004 state report said the Navy accounts for 54 percent of all Kitsap County economic activity.

The good news is this creates an economy largely insulated from the private-sector business cycle. Shipyard employment is steady — fluctuating somewhat when aircraft carriers come in for extended refits. Right now, the USS John C. Stennis is wrapping up a six-month period in drydock, during which its crew of roughly 3,000 (not including the air wing) flowed into the community.

But the bad news is that there isn’t much of a private-sector economy to grow. Kitsap County had one of Puget Sound’s slowest employment growth rates in 2007. And the economy remains tied to Navy maintenance - and federal budget - cycles.

There is a lot of brainpower in Kitsap County - the Navy employs a lot of civilian engineers. Maybe someday someone will find a way to tap that resource. But long term, it would seem the county’s best hopes for growth may lie in making Bremerton (and perhaps Port Orchard) a viable urban alternative for people who work in Seattle, just as Bainbridge is the suburban alternative. To do that, local leaders are going to have to push hard for improvements to the problem-plagued ferry system.

Till then, Kitsap County will remain shore-bound, waiting for its ships to come in.

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N.    Sound Transit ridership rose 12.5% in 2007

Gasoline prices, new services cited for increase

Seattle P-I - March 10, 2008
Levi Pulkkinen

Seattle-area commuters turned to mass transit in record numbers in 2007, boosting local ridership well above the national average, according to a study released Monday.

Light rail ridership accounted for much of the increase nationally, a fact that has some Puget Sound transportation planners anticipating even greater increases locally when the region’s first light rail system comes online in 2009.

“We think this region is really ready for light rail,” said Linda Robson, a spokeswoman for Sound Transit, the three-county transit agency building the light rail line.

Sound Transit saw ridership increase 12.5 percent in 2007, compared with a national increase of about 2 percent, according to the American Public Transportation Association, an international organization representing the transit industry.

Riders, pushed by rising gas prices and new services, took about 1.5 million more trips on express buses and commuter trains operated by Sound Transit.

The King County Department of Transportation saw the number of rides increase by 7.5 million, amounting to a 7 percent increase over 2006.

Robson said Sound Transit saw its largest increases in use of the Sounder commuter train, which runs on existing rail lines between Tacoma and Everett. The agency added several runs last year, including morning and evening trains for Seattle-area commuters who work in Tacoma.

In a statement, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels credited new services and skyrocketing gas prices with the increases.

“Each year more and more people discover that taking transit is better than dealing with rising congestion and high gas prices,” said Nickels, who is chairman of the Sound Transit board. “We will continue focusing on keeping those ridership numbers climbing. … There is a lot riding on our success.”

Nationally, public transportation use has increased 32 percent in the past 12 years, according to the association’s statistics. The number of miles traveled on U.S. highways increased 24 percent during the same period.

Last year’s increase outpaced Sound Transit projections, Robson said, and early ridership figures this year seem to be a repeat of that success.

Part of the reason for the local increase might be the partial closure of Interstate 5 for repaving work in August. During a two-week period, Sounder trains made extra trips to accommodate passengers who normally would drive the highway and averaged about 2,700 more fares per day than in July on its Tacoma-Seattle trains during the project.

The Elliott Bay Water Taxi, Washington State Ferries and Metro buses all saw increased ridership during the construction.

Robson said the agency is looking forward to an even greater increase after December 2009, when the light rail line between Seattle and Sea-Tac Airport is completed.

The first leg of light rail connecting downtown Seattle with Tukwila is expected to open in July 2009, with the airport connection to follow months later, Robson said.

Sound Transit projects that its ridership will double after the completion of the Seattle-to-airport line.

“Every time we add service for any of our modes, we see an increase in our ridership,” Robson said. “Higher gas prices are certainly encouraging people to explore other ways of commuting.”

The agency also expects to begin work later this year on a rail extension connecting the University of Washington with the airport-bound line. About $100 million for the project, which would come into service in 2016, is included in the Bush administration’s proposed budget for fiscal 2009.

Metro Transit spokeswoman Linda Thielke said the King County agency saw its biggest increases in vanpool ridership and on recently reorganized routes in South King County. On an average weekday last year, riders took 365,000 trips on Metro buses and vans.

“There just seems to be a real pent-up demand out there,” she said.

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O.    Council hesitant to extend TheBoat (Honolulu)

Star Bulletin – March 14, 2008
Laurie Au

As city transportation officials pushed yesterday for follow-on funding for a commuter ferry system, several City Council members questioned whether it is worth $4 million to continue the service from Kalaeloa.

City Transportation Director Wayne Yoshioka said ridership on TheBoat, a city pilot project, has increased to about 300 passengers a day since crews fixed an ongoing engine problem on one of the two ferries.

“It’s very positive right now,” Yoshioka said in a recent interview. “If we can get a little above of what we’re getting at right now (in ridership), we’d be very satisfied.”

The administration hopes to decide by August whether to extend the project beyond one year, which will cost about $4 million, Yoshioka said.

“We’ll evaluate what the ridership is projected to be, and we’ll make a decision whether that’s enough to justify moving forward,” he told the City Council’s budget committee yesterday.

But several members of the Council were skeptical about approving the money without knowing TheBoat’s impact on alleviating traffic.

“If we’re merely shifting bus riders onto TheBoat, I’m not sure this is a wise expenditure,” said Councilman Charles Djou.

Council Chairwoman Barbara Marshall was also concerned that if the $4 million is approved in June, the Council would have no control later if the city extends the service.

Council Budget Chairman Todd Apo said he supports extending TheBoat’s service for another year to better gauge ridership numbers.

“The operation problems we had in the beginning were terrible, and we need time to recover,” said Apo.

In an effort to boost ridership, the administration is considering changing TheBoat’s schedule. A 6 a.m. departure from Kalaeloa might be moved to 6:30 or 6:45 a.m. The 5:30 and 8 a.m. rides would stay the same.

The afternoon schedule, departing from Aloha Tower, could change to 4, 5 and 6 p.m. versus the current 4:20, 5:20 and 6:50 p.m. times.

That would accommodate Kapolei resident Melanie Brooks, who gave up her car to ride TheBoat and saves about $60 in gas every week.

“I have to wait 45 minutes after getting off work to catch it,” said Brooks, who takes the 4:20 p.m. boat every day.

Several passengers said yesterday they would like it to become a permanent service, but noted that many riders are tourists and not commuters.

The service began in September funded by a $5 million federal grant for the two ferries, which can carry 149 passengers each.

The city is also looking into applying for more federal money and adding another stop at Iroquois Point in Ewa Beach.

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P.    Give TheBoat time to build reliability (Honolulu)

Star Bulletin – March 17, 2009
Editorial

The City Council is considering whether to continue TheBoat service for commuters for a second year.

Early problems with TheBoat’s commuter voyages between Barbers Point Harbor and Aloha Tower crippled its draw but the city says the operation has rebounded. The fledgling service should continue, along with marketing campaigns to coax more people to take the ride.

TheBoat — actually two boats — began service last September, drawing about 300 riders a day, said city Transportation Director Wayne Yoshioka. One of the boats had mechanical problems in November and December, causing ridership to drop to not many more than 100.

Yoshioka told the City Council last week that ridership has increased to about 300. That level is far better than previous commuter ferries that took the same route. The city’s goal is to reach 400 to 500 riders a day, but reliability will be necessary to achieve those numbers. That level of ridership would be cost-effective compared with the city’s express bus service, said Yoshioka.

Previous ferry attempts failed to recognize commuter’s needs, neglecting to provide connecting bus service. TheBoat includes bus links from the Waianae Coast and the outer reaches of Kapolei and Makakilo to Barbers Point Harbor, plus links from Aloha Tower to various areas, including Waikiki and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

The city received a $5 million federal grant to begin TheBoat service and extending the service through a second year would cost $4 million. The city expects to apply for more federal money and to add a stop at Iroquois Point in Ewa Beach.

Several City Council members expressed skepticism last week about approving expenditures to continue TheBoat service. However, Council Budget Chairman Todd Apo was right in saying TheBoat should be allowed time to recover from the early operation problems and build a reputation of reliability that is important to commuters.

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Q.    Lack of panel appointees holds up new ferry project (San Francisco)

Inside Bay – March 8, 2008
Christine Morente

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO — A project expected to provide ferry service to more than 24,000 employees within a three-mile radius of Oyster Point Marina/Park is in limbo.

The plan’s progress hinges on the appointment of a five-member advisory board to the San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority, and that hasn’t happened yet.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to choose three people, while Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez are each expected to appoint a member, said Peter Grenell, general manager of the San Mateo County Harbor District. “We would have preferred to know yesterday,” Grenell said recently about the status of the appointments.

The new agency was formed in January with last year’s passage of Senate Bill 976. It was to replace the now-defunct Bay Area Water Transit Authority and its 11-member board.

The staff from the former agency was transferred to the new authority. The agency is set up to receive up to $250 million from infrastructure bonds.

Sabrina Lockhart, spokeswoman for the governor, said Schwarzenegger is looking for the most qualified people for the positions and wants them filled as soon as possible. But Lockhart said she doesn’t know when he will make the appointments.

To speed the process, South City officials and San Mateo County Board of Supervisors President Adrienne Tissier have pressed state officials to appoint a board.

“We haven’t heard anything,” South City Mayor Pedro Gonzales said. “We are just feeling desperate.”
Tissier stressed Thursday that the board appointments must be completed as soon as possible. Without a board, a construction contract for the terminal can’t be awarded, and further delays could raise construction costs.

“We’re already building boats,” she said. “My concern is the longer we wait, the longer it would take to get the construction done, and the longer it would take for people to ride the ferry.” In December, the former Water Transit Authority signed a lease with the city and the harbor district to operate and provide ferry service between Oyster Point and Jack London Square in Oakland.

The entities are now waiting for the state Department of Boating and Waterways to review and sign the lease.

The total cost to build the terminal is expected to be $29 million.

South City was identified in 2003 as one of the priority sites for service.

A year later, Regional Measure 2 — which increased Bay Area bridge tolls — allowed the Water Transit Authority to collect $12 million to build two 149-passenger catamarans as well as an annual $3 million to operate the service.

In addition, Measure A, the San Mateo County sales tax, and other federal grants are expected to bring in more funds for ferry service for South City and Redwood City.

The plan is to run one boat three to four times in the morning and early evening on weekdays. The extra boat will be available if there is enough demand.

So far, there are no plans for weekend service.

Despite the absence of a board, preparations for the ferry terminal will stay on course, said Steve Castleberry, the authority’s chief executive officer.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is scheduled to create a breakwater to accommodate the ferries in May.

“We’re not in paralysis,” Castleberry said. “The design process continues and we’re (preparing) environmental documents, but we have a whole laundry list of things we need a board for.”

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R.    xx

xx

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S.    BC Ferries Leaks Money, Riders

Losses five times higher than a year ago. Falling passenger numbers have critics sounding alarms.

The Tyee – March 11, 2008
Andrew MacLeod

Unless there’s a course correction soon at British Columbia Ferry Services Inc., in a few years British Columbians may look back at a corporate crash and wonder what the people now at the helm were smoking.

The quasi-private, publicly owned company released its quarterly report last week for the period that ended on Dec. 31, 2007. The company expected to lose money in the quarter, but it lost about five times as much as it did during the same period last year.

At least part of the story is a fall in the number of vehicles and passengers.

“I’m not surprised at all the trend is going downwards,” said NDP ferry critic Gary Coons. “Fares are just skyrocketing. The minor routes are feeling a huge crunch. Somewhere along the line it’s going to crash.”

Fares have increased by as much as 55 per cent since 2003 on some routes, will rise again April 1 and are expected to double again by 2012.

Traffic on the major routes between the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island has been steady and had roughly the same volume in 2007 as in 2005. The northern routes, which went several months without a replacement for the Queen of the North after it sunk, obviously had a large decline.

There’s been a large drop as well, however, on the ferry service’s “other” routes which serve many communities on the Gulf Islands and along the coast. Vehicle trips fell by 46,300 and passenger trips by 116,100 in a year. Compared to two years earlier, passenger trips on the routes are down by 2.4 per cent.

Nobody from B.C. Ferries was available to discuss the figures.

Number of factors

At the end of February, however, B.C. Ferries filed its Management’s Discussion & Analysis of Financial Conditions and Results of Operations for the Three Months Ended December 31, 2007 with the Canadian Securities Administrator’s SEDAR filing system.

The drop in passengers is no big deal, it said.

“Ferry traffic levels are affected by a number of factors, including transportation costs, the value of the Canadian dollar, weather, global security, levels of tourism, disposable personal income, the local economy and population growth,” the discussion said.

“During the last two fiscal years, traffic levels were negatively affected by the loss of capacity on our northern routes, an unprecedented number of severe wind and snow storms in November and December 2006, and the implementation of three fuel surcharges.”

Compared to five years ago, it said, the numbers are “trending upwards” and added, “Over the next few years, we anticipate modest traffic volume increases on all our routes.”

Five years ago, it should be noted, tourism numbers dropped throughout North America following the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York. While the industry has since rebounded, ferry traffic has not.

Tourism consultant surprised

The drop in passengers should have been anticipated. A 1997 B.C. Ferries study found that on the minor routes a bump in fares of 10 per cent would decrease the number of users by three per cent. On the major routes the decrease would be five per cent.

Observers, however, aren’t so sure, given the weak recent performance.

“I’m a bit surprised they haven’t seen stronger growth,” said Frank Bourree, a tourism consultant with Chemistry Consulting Group Inc. in Victoria. The tourism industry has been generally strong in the past two years. “Tourism numbers have been strong onto Vancouver Island.”

Part of the explanation may be changes to the tourism industry in general. “We had a record last year, but it’s a different kind of tourist,” he said. The number of Americans visiting has dropped by 35 per cent from five years ago, and that’s likely to continue with new passport rules coming into effect.

The void for the ferries has not been filled by British Columbians travelling. Many people in the Lower Mainland think ferry tickets are too expensive, he said. “There’s been some price perceptions over there.” Still, with the new German-built ships arriving, more people may make the trip. “I think with the new ships coming on line in Nanaimo they’re going to attract a lot of attention and reduce some of the wait times,” he said. “You might get some new trial.”

Rising fares blamed

Fares have already risen in the order of 55 per cent on many routes over the past five years. With fares set to rise again on April 1, the NDP’s Coons said, passenger numbers will get worse. “I predict ridership’s going to go down.”

Peter Larose, the director of policy and planning for the Council of Tourism Associations of B.C., said the organization is concerned about future fare increases. COTA made a submission to ferry commissioner Martin Crilly when he was considering B.C. Ferries 2008-2012 plans for price caps and service levels. “We didn’t want to see a substantial increase in fares and certainly didn’t want to see a reduction in service.”

As a business organization, he said, COTA is sympathetic to the ferry company managing its affairs with an eye on the bottom line. But with fares set to double, he said, it will escalate the effect on passenger levels and tourism patterns. “That has to have some form of impact,” he said. “You’re starting to impact travel behaviours significantly there.”

He also pointed out the biggest drop has been on the secondary routes, especially in the off season. Many locals are cutting their trips and staying home, he said.

Locals staying put

Coons has visited 29 ferry-dependent communities in recent months to hold town hall meetings and discuss ferry service. He’s heard a lot about the service and the rising cost, he said. “It’s a pretty horrific thing happening in the smaller communities.”

The government needs to fund the system better, he said. The cost should be shared among all British Columbians, he said, the same way improvements to the Sea-to-Sky Highway or Kelowna’s William R. Bennett Bridge are. “It’s a marine highway. They have to treat it the same way as other transportation links.”

B.C. Ferries’ financial situation could make that hard to do. The quarterly results show the company lost $7.8 million in the three months ending Dec. 31, 2007. That compares with $1.8 million in the same period a year earlier.

The company has debt of at least $750 million, taken on since the B.C. Liberals privatized the former Crown corporation in 2003. The privatization, however, guards the company from having to say exactly how much it owes, said Coons. “I’ve heard it’s closer to 1.5 or two billion they’re in debt. That’s a real concern.”

Dropping traffic levels and reduced revenues will make balancing the books that much harder, he said.

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T.    Life Is a Gravy Boat at BC Ferries

Not all is revealed on BC Ferries web site. Two-tier lounges aren’t the only examples of privilege at the quasi-private corporation.

The Tyee - February 9, 2005
Tom Sandborn

The cost-plus “quiet lounge” being installed during the current refit of the BC Ferries Spirit of BC may just be the first experiment in two-tier travel for the recently privatized ferry service, vice-president for marketing and retail services Geoff Dickson recently told The Tyee.

But don’t look for public notice about the plans on the BC Ferries web site any time soon. Despite the nearly half-a-million-dollar cost the luxury retreat for business travellers will add to the $14 million refit for each spirit-class ferry so modified, the site is still silent on the matter.

The web site lists details of all other refit changes, but says nothing about the plan for special accommodations for travellers willing to pay $7 a head to skip coffee shop and newsstand lines and to enjoy “complimentary” newspapers, coffee, and pastries. Dickson told The Tyee that information about the lounge will be added to the BC Ferry web site “closer to March, when the Spirit of BC returns to service.”

Dickson also said he expects the next spirit-class vessel due for maintenance, the Spirit of Vancouver Island, will be fitted out with a comparable lounge facility next year.

There are other interesting omissions on the BC Ferries web site. For example, the site describes the company’s new president, former New Yorker David Hahn, as “Chief Operating Officer at Ogden Aviation, managing U.S. and international operations, including 25,000 employees and airport operations in 30 countries.”

Hahn broke up company

Mayne Island writer Terry Glavin pointed out a year ago, in an article originally published in the Georgia Straight, that Hahn came to the quasi-privatized BC Ferry Services Inc. in 2003 with a more complex job history.

In fact, according to Glavin, Hahn served for four years as vice president of energy and transportation giant Covanta, Ogden Aviation’s parent company, where he presided over the sale of company assets following a monumental bankruptcy.

Covanta began as Ogden Corporation and adopted a new name as it diversified. It encountered big trouble in the energy business, built up $3.3 billion in debt, and Hahn had to dispose of the Ogden Aviation businesses he had previously managed.

Glavin, citing an article in the Troubled Company Reporter, says as part of his settlement upon leaving the company he was paid a $30,000 a month consulting fee, which extended through his first year of employment at BC Ferries. In addition, he received more than $200,000 in other payments.

This helps to put Hahn’s belief that ferry workers are on a gravy train, er, boat, in perspective, and explains the buttons worn by some ferry workers that read “Pass the gravy, Davey.”

Lounge ‘not elitist’

Dickson said the luxury lounge, which will seat a maximum of 93 passengers each voyage, on craft that can carry a passenger load of 2,000, is “open to everybody. We expect an average of between 30 to 50 passengers a trip will use the lounge. Our polling indicated that 20 percent of our passengers were interested in this concept. It’s not elitist. It all comes down to what you sell, how people are going to be satisfied. The lounge will offer one-stop shopping. We’re trying to meet the needs of our customers.”

The proposed lounge will be open to children if their parents are willing and able to pay for them too. “We just have to hope the three year olds will be well behaved,” Dickson said.

A modest squall of public dismay blew up after The Tyee broke news of the plans for luxury lounge installation last month. Critics decried the lounge as both elitist and reflective of a new, less than egalitarian impulse in B.C. life, and the stories put Hahn on the defensive. “The thing that some people are kicking around,” he told the Province, “that we’re putting in some kind of luxury box or business class lounge is not true. What we’re offering is a lounge. I don’t deny that at all.”

BC Ferries dismissed a rumour that those who pay for the new business class lounge might also be permitted to jump the queue at ferry terminals. BC Ferry Services Inc. media relations director Deborah Marshall told The Tyee that “passengers will buy admission to the lounge once they’re on board, so there is no way this could be tied to priority boarding.”

Priority boarding is currently available to those with assured boarding tickets, which sell in 10-ticket books for $749. Each ticket covers the fare and assured boarding for one standard vehicle, a driver, and a passenger.

It also seems unlikely that BC Ferries would upset its current reservation system, which allows customers to book a spot on the main Vancouver Island and Sunshine Coast routes for a $15 premium.

Reservation system ’troubling’

Lack of transparency regarding reservation fees has already prompted criticism from the province’s ferry watchdog. The reservations system is a “troubling area,” B.C. ferry commissioner Martin Crilly said in his first annual review of the quasi-private ferry corporation. Reservations aren’t subject to his review, since the Coastal Ferry Act defines them as ancillary services like the gift shops and cafeterias. “Nevertheless, in my view, there is risk that the company will unduly exploit its monopoly position in the supply and price of reserved and unreserved spaces on these often-congested routes, especially if there is significant growth in traffic in the next few years.”

The controversy about two-tier travel has emerged following the 2003 privatization of BC Ferries, which operated as a Crown corporation since 1960. That was followed by a bitter strike and controversial binding arbitration settlement that imposes a seven-year contract with no wage increases in the first three years and a six percent raise spread out over the final years of the deal.

“Deal,” however, may be the wrong word for labour agreements with BC Ferry Services Inc. The company was created by the Coastal Ferry Act, which preemptively privileges ferries management decisions over the terms of any collective agreement. The act also trumps the Labour Relations Code when the two conflict, yet another example of the BC Liberals’ creative approach to workers rights, an approach that has seen the Campbell government denounced by the United Nations’ International Labour Organization.

Act’s exemptions are broad

The Coastal Ferry Act exempts the new corporation from freedom of information laws, the Ombudsman Act, and oversight by the Auditor General.

The act also gives enormous power to a ferry commissioner, whose decisions and proceedings, with very narrow exceptions, “must not be questioned, reviewed or restrained by any process or proceeding of any court.” The commissioner also has broad powers to allow uneconomic routes to be eliminated without holding public hearings.

Oh well, we may be governed by a rogue regime that’s in trouble with the UN watchdog on workers’ rights, but we can always kick back and enjoy ourselves with free croissants in the first-class lounges on B.C. ferries.

Those of you in steerage, keep rowing. All aboard!

Vancouver writer Tom Sandborn is a frequent contributor to The Tyee.

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U.    All Aboard the Vomit Comet (BC Ferries)

BC Ferries’ ‘Northern Adventure’ An islander takes a trip on the new northern ferry.

The Tyee - April 13, 2007
Heather Ramsay

Roiling seas, flooding below decks, public address system black outs and a call to abandon ship. Sound like the latest high seas Hollywood adventure film?

Think BC Ferries instead. The sunken Queen of the North’s replacement, the Northern Adventure may have enjoyed enthusiastic receptions at a recent open house, but a series of mishaps have plagued the ship ever since. I was aboard the Northern Adventure on the Easter long weekend and lived to tell the tale.

For islanders, the adventure began at 2 a.m. on Good Friday. Ah, we were keen — ready to leap aboard the fancy new BC Ferries ship for its maiden passenger voyage between Skidegate and Prince Rupert.

At first, I was willing to forgive the delays. It was a typical early spring day. The wind was predicted to build through the evening and had been blasting from the southeast the night before. Our sailing was scheduled to leave at 2 a.m., but after a visit to the BC Ferries website I found out the crossing from Rupert had been delayed.

Two in the morning is a strange-enough hour for a scheduled departure (typically the Thursday evening ferry leaves at 11 p.m.), but by 10 p.m., the departure time was already bumped to 4:30 a.m.

And so, in the middle of the night, the Skidegate terminal was packed with travellers, including families with small children, set to walk aboard.

Many were unprepared for what awaited.

Floating pukefest

First, there was a lot of waiting. Upon arrival, two hours of unloading drop trailers from the recently arrived ferry ensued, then more hours of backing different ones on as BC Ferries crew worked out the best way of loading the new vessel.

Passengers who had been revelling at 2 a.m. were reduced to curses and swears by the time we started loading. The frustration was evident on terminal attendants’ faces as cars were finally directed on to the boat.

By 5:30 a.m. many of us were aboard, but the ferry was still in the dock.

I considered foregoing my wait-listed cabin ($55 for an inside room, $65 for the privilege of a window) for a spot on the floor, but I was warned. The voyage was sure to be a “pukefest,” much as it had been on the sailing over from Prince Rupert.

After a mishap with a dysfunctional — and still dirty from the previous passenger — toilet, which staff said was due to a shortage of cleaners (not to mention the distinct lack of vacuuming going on), I settled into a berth and closed my tired eyes around 7 a.m. I was still wired from three hours of shivering in the car, but dozed off sometime later.

Emergency! Um, never mind

After two hours of rising high on the stormy Hecate Strait swells then pitching down with stomach-lurching drops, the sound of seven short blasts and one long alarm startled me awake.

I scrambled from my bed (very comfortable, by the way), bumping between walls to the door. My head and several others popped out of cabins up and down the hall. “What the ‘bleep’ is that for?” we all asked. No one knew. It didn’t sound good.

I slammed my door, dashed to the bed and pulled on my socks and boots. I was in the midst of assessing what else to grab, when a voice yelled out from the hall.

“Disregard the alarm. Disregard the alarm,” said the BC Ferries staffer stumbling down the hall in the pitch of the storm. The blasts, seven short and one long, (code for abandon ship, I was later told) continued.

Heads popped out again. “What was it all about?” we asked. No one knew.

I stumbled back to bed, trying to disregard the incessant blap, blap, blapping of the alarm.

When should we once again take notice of the alarm? My thoughts swirled with uncertainty about the boat, but likely my level of fear was nowhere near that of the crew, three of whom, I heard, had been on the Queen of the North the night it sank.

Finally the blast was cut short mid-ring, like a wire had been ripped out of the wall, and the noise ended for good. I praised be and tried once again to sleep.

Where’s that water coming from?

When I arose, around 12:30 p.m., the hallways were a flutter with activity again. This time technicians were assessing the swamp of water squishing in the carpets. “The drainage system backed up and spilled on to the floor,” I was told.

Gross. Later, I found out grey water from sinks and showers overflowed and flooded the galley during the rough seas.

BC Ferries spokesperson Deborah Marshall says the galley was closed for a time, to sanitize the area, but was open again before the ship docked.

Problems in the galley? Did that explain how awful my meal was? The grilled chicken in my burger tasted and felt like leather. At least it was offered for free.

By this time, many passengers had already agreed upon a new name for the $51 million ship, The Northern Mis-Adventure, she was dubbed. I’ve heard rumours that her malfunctions were the cause of much criticism in Trinidad and Tobago, where the Greek-built ship had worked as a ferry. More recently, she was a charter cruise ship in Spain. After spending $18 million already on refits, it seems clear there is more spending to come.

An idea: testing stuff

Down on the car deck, I found out why the alarm had rung. A fire extinguisher had come loose from its lashings, lost its pin, and started spraying dry chemicals all over nearby cars. The white powder got into the venting system and clogged up the alarm sensors. This was fixed before docking, but the incident brought an even bigger issue to the fore.

The public address system could not be used at the same time as the alarm was ringing, a major problem for passengers and crew trying to figure out what the “bleep” is going on. The BC Ferries crew member on the car deck said electricians were being flown in from down south to fix the problem. Had this type of thing not been tested before?

On April 10, Marshall told me both systems had been approved by Transport Canada before the first sailing, and the problem with the systems being connected was now fixed and Transport Canada had cleared the vessel for travel once again.

By 2 p.m. on Good Friday, I drove off the boat, relieved my mis-adventure was finally over.

But I hadn’t heard the last of the tale yet. Over the weekend, in a town four hours away, friends relayed reports that the ferry had not moved from Prince Rupert since I had arrived.

I thought little about it until Monday, when we called to confirm the ferry was leaving that night at 11 p.m. “Oh yes,” the man on BC Ferries’ toll-free line said. “No problem.” But he neglected to mention that my reservation had been bumped (Monday night’s ferry was now Sunday night’s and we were now scheduled to leave on Wednesday!).

After much panic and stress, I made it on the boat on standby, only to find there was plenty of room on the car deck for the bumped vehicles.

Sea of troubles

I also found out, by accident, that I was entitled to a free one-way trip on the ferry, after surviving the night of the alarms. Thanks for letting me know BC Ferries. If anyone else who was on the ferry April 6 doesn’t know, the captain has advised that those passengers can have a complimentary trip between Rupert and Skidegate.

Reading through news stories over the weekend, I see that my three-hour wait was a mere ripple in a troubled sea.

Port Hardy-bound passengers waited until Saturday at 8 p.m., more than 24 hours after their ferry was supposed to depart, to get underway.

I heard about more mishaps on the new ferry on my way back to the islands. A friend took the trip from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert, but couldn’t have breakfast because there were no eggs. There was no juice either, not to mention the pop machines didn’t work. Also:

The video games area is gone and there is nothing specifically for youth to do.

There are only two spots in the cafeteria area with electrical outlets for those who want to use a laptop on the trip. And these plug-ins are found high up on the wall.

There is a shortage of cleaners available to help turn the ship around in Skidegate

The cafeteria is now open 24-hours because no gates were built in to enable staff to close the area for any length of time.

The foot rests in the lounge are too far away for short people (in other words, too much leg room!).

Then there were the toilets. The one in his cabin stopped flushing, as did those on the rest of the boat. Something to do with the vacuum system, my friend said. But something must have been fixed in the middle of the night, because that’s when they awoke to the loud sucking sound of toilets becoming operational across the boat.

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V.    Ferry Goes Down, Quality of Service Rises (BC Ferries)

Latest victim: Queen of Prince Rupert So says BC Ferries’ new report. But not its customers

The Tyee - November 24, 2006
Heather Ramsay

Never has B.C. Ferries provided better service on the north coast than in the months after the Queen of the North sank.

At least that’s what the company is telling itself. Which has a lot of ferry users scratching their heads.

Covering the period from April to June 30, 2006, a quality of service report prepared by the corporation for the B.C. Ferry Commission reads like a pat on the back for good ferry service provided.

But among residents on the northern route, the memories of being stranded last spring are still fresh.

Adding to the frustration is the fact that for more than the past week the Queen of Prince Rupert, which provides the only car and passenger transportation link between the mainland and the Queen Charlotte Islands, has been out of service again. The surprise stoppage dashed the hopes of everyone from the high school girls’ volleyball team to those with long awaited medical specialist appointments in Terrace.

Stranded for a month

According to B.C. Ferries’ cheerful report, the corporation provided 180 per cent of the scheduled round trips during those early days last spring. Between Skidegate and Prince Rupert, 77 return trips were made, and the corporation had only been required to provide 43.

How is this possible? After the biggest ship in the northern fleet sank 400 metres below the surface of the Inside Passage near Hartley Bay on March 22, the ferry corporation was left with one aging vessel to cover the routes between Skidegate and Prince Rupert and Prince Rupert and Port Hardy. But that ship, the Queen of Prince Rupert, was in dry dock for its annual repairs and wouldn’t be ready until the end of April.

For a month last spring, Queen Charlotte Islanders and others were stranded on either side of Hecate Strait, unable to get vehicles back on or off the misty isles.

B.C. Ferry Commissioner Martin Crilly, to whom the report is addressed, agrees the report doesn’t make sense unless the reader knows what went on behind the scenes and even he has had to go back to B.C. Ferries for clarification.

The report notes the number of round trips was up thanks to a “supplemental charter vessel.” Soon after the Queen of the North sank, B.C. Ferries provided a regular tug and barge service for commercial freight to the islands, as well as flights chartered between the islands and Prince Rupert for passengers.

Thanks for flying BC Ferries

This too sounds great, but, of course, there was a hitch. Flights were only made available to people who had made reservations prior to the ferry sinking and later, after lobbying by locals, for those with medical appointments on the mainland. But for many islanders this added service was no help.

“The reports are set up for the normal service pattern,” says Crilly. “But flying people to Prince Rupert is not exactly the same thing as taking a ship.”

John Farrell, who works on the islands, but who has a wife, child and business in Prince Rupert, knows that. He is a regular customer on the marine highway, commuting between Queen Charlotte and the mainland by parking his car in Skidegate, walking on the ferry and walking off on the other side. Last spring, he was not in the habit of making reservations for travel. Most locals didn’t, knowing there was always space for passengers and often space for vehicles at the last minute.

Farrell was forced to pay for his own flights back and forth across the Strait until he realized others had been flying. It took some lobbying, but with records of his weekly use of the ferry, he eventually convinced B.C. Ferries to allow him to use the charter service.

Now, eight months later, he always makes reservations, but this time he was out of luck.

Now no ferry, no flights

In mid-October, a crab trap got wound up in one of the Queen of Prince Rupert’s two props, and broke the seal on one of the stern tubes. The leaking seal was not a safety problem, says B.C. Ferries spokesperson Mark Stefanson, but they wanted to get it fixed as soon as possible.

The last trip the QPR made off the islands left Thursday, Nov. 16 and the ferry went to dry dock in Ketchikan, Alaska. It is not expected back until this Sunday, Nov. 26. Even though Farrell had reservations for those two weekends, this time B.C. Ferries decided not to provide flights for islanders, stranding him again.

Lee-al Nelson, the volleyball coach in Queen Charlotte, is fuming. He booked return ferry passage for himself and 23 girls on the junior and senior teams a month in advance of the date they were all heading to the regional zone playoffs. Two days before he and the teenage girls were set to go, BC Ferries informed him that the group could leave the islands, but their scheduled return trip had been cancelled.

“They should have given us more notice,” he says, outraged.

He scrambled to find a way for his senior girls, who had a chance at the championships, to go. No thanks to B.C. Ferries, he raised $1,400 in return plane fare for the volleyball players from the school board and other sources, but the juniors, who were thrilled at their first chance to play in the zones, were left high and dry.

When he demanded compensation, his pleas fell on deaf ears.

“They told me it was something they couldn’t control,” he says.

Sorry, private corporation

It was bad enough when B.C. Ferries gave him the cold shoulder, but then Nelson called the Ministry of Transportation. “They said they couldn’t get involved, that B.C. Ferries was a private corporation now.”

But Nelson doesn’t agree. “That’s our highway,” he says. Providing a route off the islands is part of the ministry’s portfolio, he says.

Why would B.C. Ferries leave it until the last minute to tell them the ferry would be out of service?

Kerry Laidlaw, administrator of the Queen Charlotte Islands Hospital, says 27 people had medical appointments on the mainland that they could not get to thanks to the disruption in service. He has no idea how many patients were stranded on the other side because they couldn’t return before the ferry went out of service.

Laidlaw says some people will have to wait another six months for an appointment, and others, if they are able, are forced to pay around $300 for airfare, as opposed to the ferry fare, which is free for medical travellers.

The ferry is allowed to miss 20 consecutive days of service and still receive its $40,000 subsidy per sailing. The company was given permission to miss more sailings when the unusual circumstance of the sinking took place. The missed sailings this month are not in contravention of the company’s contract, says Crilly.

‘Not going to let it rest’

Nelson says islanders are getting shafted. People in the lower mainland or southern Vancouver Island would never put up with such a lack of service. Not to mention the lack of support he’s getting for young athletes, girls who could be future Olympians, in a province leading up to 2010.

He thinks it is ridiculous there is no backup boat in the first place, and he doesn’t understand why B.C. Ferries would not provide the same level of service they did after the Queen of the North sank. Nor does he think it ethical that the ferries kept taking reservations even though they knew there was a problem that would have to be fixed.

“I’m not going to let it rest. I’m going to push it,” he says, having already talked with CBC radio and television news.

But even though the B.C. Ferry Commission is tasked with monitoring the quality of service B.C. Ferries provides, it is not a general complaints bureau, nor does the commissioner act as an ombudsman.

“It’s not my job to police the day-to-day performance of B.C. Ferries,” says Crilly. He says the commission gathers data a reports in order to look for longer-term trends, things that might indicate the regulators are squeezing the corporation too hard, or that service reliability is deteriorating. “But it does seem like this is not the best way to treat customers,” he says.

Farrell agrees. “They responded well to the crisis, but as soon as the heat is off, they go back to screwing us.”

Sinking improved punctuality

Farrell is furious that the company knew for a week that they would take the boat out of service. He says they should have made arrangements for those who use the route like a highway.

“Good companies remember who their clients are and remember the roots of their business,” he says.

Meanwhile B.C. Ferries has provided one more unlikely, upbeat tidbit in their report likely to further confuse islanders. The sinking seems to have improved punctuality on the northern sailings.

B.C. Ferries is required to report to the commission on how often the ferries sail within 10 minutes of their scheduled departure. The northern routes don’t often do well in this regard. In April, May and June of 2004 when running between Skidegate and Prince Rupert, the ferry left on schedule less than 30 per cent of the time. During the same months of 2005, the ferry set sail within 10 minutes of its scheduled departure less than 40 per cent of the time.

Just about any user of the ferry can attest to the waits. People have got on the ferry, cuddled into their cabins and woke up in the morning, only to find themselves in the same harbour where they boarded. These extreme cases have more to do with inclement weather than lack of service, but long waits before departure are the norm on northern routes.

Lucky for B.C. Ferries, they can show — after the Queen of the North sank — a surprising leap. All of a sudden the sailings were on-time 90 per cent of the time.

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W.    Ferry sinking report sparks storm

Key questions left unanswered in board’s review

Victoria Times Colonist - March 13, 2008
Cindy E. Harnett,

VANCOUVER — A sorrowful apology from the man on the bridge of the Queen of the North when it rammed Gil Island and sank failed to quell intensifying discontent from all corners yesterday demanding to know exactly what happened during the final 14 minutes of the ill-fated voyage.

The Transportation Safety Board released its $900,000 report on the sinking yesterday, almost two years after the March 22, 2006, marine disaster in which two people died. But the lack of answers in the report only further aggravated people wanting to know what happened between the time the vessel, carrying 101 people, was supposed to turn at Sainty Point and 14 minutes later, when it sailed into the rocky shore of Gil Island at 17.5 knots.

It’s been known for some time that Karl Lilgert and Karen Bricker, former lovers who were working their first night shift together after breaking up, were left alone on the bridge after the second, most senior officer, Keven Hilton, took a scheduled meal break.

Board chairwoman Wendy Tadros said Lilgert and Bricker fully co-operated with safety board investigators during several “exhaustive” interviews, but “juicy details” about them that the media were demanding weren’t revealed because they weren’t considered pertinent to the crash or its mandate to improve safety. Moreover, she said, it would not allow the TSB to gain the confidence of future witnesses in future investigations if it unveiled confidential testimony.

The safety board investigates accidents for the sole purpose of advancing transportation safety, but it is not mandated to lay blame or determine criminal or civil liability. Tadros would say only yesterday that Lilgert and Bricker were not fighting.

B.C. Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon was among those unhappy with the report.

“The only request I would make to those two individuals is they ought to come forward and testify truthfully,” said Falcon. “I think that’s the right thing to do, regardless of personal circumstances, regardless of what your lawyers say, there comes a point where you just have to say: No, the right thing to do is to step forward and tell the truth and I encourage them to do that.”

In its internal investigation, B.C. Ferries said it never found out what happened in the 14 final minutes before the crash, but Ferries’ president David Hahn found enough grounds to defend firing the three bridge crew.

“It’s over for us in terms of an investigation,” he said yesterday.

But the missing information likely means many people didn’t get the closure they were hoping for. “I think it’s important if the family members who lost a loved one would want some clearer explanation,” said Hahn. “The only people I think that were not taken care of today were the family members who really wanted to know what the hell happened.”

B.C. Ferry and Marine Workers’ Union president Jackie Miller said if the corporation had installed voyage data recorders “we wouldn’t be talking about those 14 minutes.”

While others complained about lack of information in the TSB report, the union did not. “The union commends the Transportation Safety Board of Canada on the thoroughness and accuracy of its report,” it said in a statement.

Miller said in retrospect it would have been helpful to know the two bridge crew members had been in a relationship and what they were talking about, but “two people in a casual conversation didn’t sink the ship.”

The sinking happened because of the lack of a third qualified person on the bridge to aid Bricker who was in training, as stated in the report, she said. She blamed the corporation for keeping staff to a minimum for cost savings.

In an attempt to quell the discontent yesterday, Lilgert issued a passionate statement to “all impacted by the sinking of the Queen of the North.”

“I continue to grieve for the missing persons and would, with all my heart, exchange my life for theirs,” Lilgert wrote. “Words are inadequate for the sorrow and grief I feel. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about everyone that was impacted by this tragic accident. For all of this, I am deeply sorry.”

Survivor Clive Seabrook, a Port Alberni RCMP officer, said he wants answers, not an apology. “I don’t accept the apology,” Seabrook said in an interview. “If you’re truly sorry you’d tell us what happened and you wouldn’t hide behind what legal advice you’ve been given.”

The Transportation Safety Board report concluded that the March 22 crash was the result of a total safety system failure: that a third person should have been on the bridge that night; that a proper watch wasn’t kept; that a personal conversation and bad weather distracted the two crew members; that an off-course alarm was switched off during a refit in the shipyards; that navigational equipment wasn’t used to its full advantage; and that when the fourth officer realized the ship was off course, his actions were “too little, too late.”

The safety board report says Lilgert thought he made the call for a course change at Sainty Point and had another 27 minutes to go until the next course change. But Miller said Bricker, who was at the wheel and taking direction from Lilgert, is traumatized by the event and can’t remember whether the change was called.

The safety board concluded he did not order the crucial turn.

Included in its recommendations yesterday was a call for voyage data recorders — similar to airplane black boxes. B.C. Ferries has already made most of the recommended changes.

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X.    TSB report makes victims of victims all over again (BC Ferries)

The Province - March 13, 2008
Michael Smyth

For the victims of the Queen of the North disaster and their families, yesterday’s report from the Transportation Safety Board must make them feel like victims all over again.

Two years is an agonizing time to wait for a report that doesn’t say anything new. For all the time, energy and taxpayers’ money that went into this investigation, the board yesterday released a whole lot of nothing.

But it’s even worse than that: For some reason, the TSB seemed determined to treat Karl Lilgert and Karen Bricker — the former lovers who were at the helm of the ferry when it hit Gil Island — with kid gloves.

The board concluded the two officers were possibly distracted by a “personal conversation” and that this may have been one of the causes of the accident.

But, incredibly, the board refused to say what the pair were talking about.

“The description [of the conversation] is not relevant to this type of investigation,” said TSB investigator Pierre Murray. “It doesn’t matter what they were talking about.”

Not relevant? It doesn’t matter? Two people are dead. Dozens more were traumatized, possibly for life.

Every scrap of evidence in the case is relevant and important and the TSB’s refusal to share this information with the public is insulting in the extreme.

Lilgert and Bricker had broken up just two weeks before the accident. The fact that they had been involved in a romantic relationship was included in the TSB report, so the investigators obviously found it relevant.

Was their “personal conversation” an ex-lovers’ quarrel? Were they immersed in a soul-bearing heart-to-heart about their failed romance? Or were they just chatting about the weather?

The TSB should tell you what they know so you can make up your own mind about whether their conversation was relevant or not. Instead, we got spin and a strangely defensive attitude from the TSB investigators.

I find it astonishing, for example, that the investigators would list a squall as one of the things that could have possibly distracted Lilgert and Bricker from their duties.

How is a squall possibly a distraction for a professional mariner? If anything, a squall should have focused their attention on their duties, not distracted them from it.

It’s almost like the investigators seemed to agree with B.C. Ferries’ union leader Jackie Miller, who made this incredible comment yesterday: “Karen Bricker and Karl Lilgert are two victims, just like the two people who went down with the ship.”

Unbelievable.

Our only hope for the truth now rests with the RCMP and with the flurry of civil lawsuits spawned by the disaster.

The civil litigation will hopefully result in all the relevant witnesses in the case being subjected to cross-examination in a public court-room.

And as for the RCMP, two years is long enough for them to investigate. Either lay charges or explain to the public why the police — along with the TSB — can’t deliver accountability in this very public tragedy.

——————————————————————–
WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT

NAME:  Kingston Express Association, a Washington non-profit corporation

PURPOSE: The purpose of the Association is to develop foot ferry service between Kingston and Seattle.

FOCUS:  The initial focus is to replace the Aqua-Express.  The Association will consider a range of concepts, analyze alternatives, and prepare a Kingston Community Foot Ferry Development Plan.

MEMBERSHIP:  Full membership is open to all former regular two-way riders of the Aqua-Express.  Associate members are welcome and may include members of the Kingston community, and others who support the goals of the Kingston Express Association.

VOTING: All full members are eligible to vote for a board of directors.

GOVERNANCE: A five person board of directors is elected annually by the members, who select among themselves a president, vice-president and secretary.

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the weekly e-newsletter digest please send an e-mail to Nels Sultan at nsultan@kingstonexpress.org.   Anyone can receive the digest for free and there is no obligation.  See our web site for additional information: www.kingstonexpress.org