STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – Is operating the Staten Island Ferry all that complicated?
It would seem so.
Service reductions have become the norm, as has infighting between the city Department of Transportation and a ferry workers’ union.
The DOT last week announced that morning and afternoon rush hour ferry service would be on a modified schedule for two weeks because of an influx of COVID cases among ferry workers.
But the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association (MEBA) union, which has been engaged in a long-running contract dispute with the city, said that persistent understaffing issues were the reason for the service change.
Who knows who’s right? All commuters know is that rush-hour, daily or overnight service reductions are a common occurrence these days.
The City Council in 2013 passed a law mandating round-the-clock service every half hour on the Staten Island Ferry. The law was pushed by then-City Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid-Island) and was something that borough officials and commuters here had long called for.
The bill was passed under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Mayor Bill de Blasio later provided the funding and put the new schedule into effect.
It was a huge step for us. For years the boats ran only every hour after a certain point in the night. And if there were delays for any reason, you could be stranded in the ferry terminal for quite some time in the dead of night.
The increased service was a win all around, helping off-shift workers get back and forth to their jobs in a timely manner. It was also a boon for revelers returning home after enjoying city night life.
But things have run up on the shoals ever since, thanks initially to COVID-19.
With so few people commuting to their offices during the pandemic, ferry service was reduced to hourly intervals around the clock as of March of 2020.
Oddo, who was the borough president by that point, wasn’t happy about the reduction, but understood that we were in the midst of a public health emergency. Parochial concerns had to take a back seat.
Other ferry measures, less easy to understand, were also implemented, such as prohibiting lower-level boarding and senselessly closing terminal bathrooms overnight and shuttering bathrooms on the boats.
Full ferry service was restored in August of 2021, with normal boat operations hailed as another sign that the city had bounced back from COVID-19.
It hasn’t panned out that way. Permanent, round-the-clock, half hour service remains elusive, despite the fact that it’s mandated by city law.
When did running a fleet of ferry boats get so difficult? It’s a 5.2-mile trip from St. George to Whitehall Street in Manhattan. It takes 25 minutes. How hard can this be?
A colleague the other day suggested to me that with Staten Island Ferry ridership still not what it once was thanks to workplace changes wrought by the pandemic, we may not ever need to return to the full ferry service that we once enjoyed.
But as a Staten Islander, I refuse to give up a service that’s been given to us, particularly one that’s backed up by city law and was signed off on by two mayors. What’s the good of having a law if it can be so regularly ignored?
And as a person who lives on an island, and who isn’t connected to the city subway system, ferry service is pretty darn important to me.
And if all those eco-friendly, tree-hugging, anti-car pols on the Manhattan mainland really want to get us out of our vehicles, reducing any mass transit service, including ferry service, is not the way to go about it.
Someone has to figure this one out.
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July 23, 2022 at 09:00PM
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When did running the Staten Island Ferry get so difficult? (opinion) - SILive.com
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