Post by ferryfast admin on Apr 5, 2005 22:26:12 GMT -5
Article Last Updated: 4/05/2005 06:08 AM
Alameda-to -S.F. ferry funds in peril
Lagging ridership could cost Harbor Bay service its MTC subsidy, sink shuttle
By Susan McDonough, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
www.insidebayarea.com/
ALAMEDA — Declining ridership on the Harbor Bay Ferry may sink the service that shuttles hundreds of commuters daily between Alameda and San Francisco.
Alameda Interim City Manager Bill Norton said Friday that the ferry must boost fare revenue or lose critical funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
The ferry makes several trips across the San Francisco Bay daily and carries about 120,000 passengers annually between Alameda's Bay Farm Island and the San Francisco Ferry Building,
MTC subsidizes the ferry with Regional Measure 1 money, generated by toll increases at Bay Area bridges, which local voters approved in 1988 for public transit projects.
The agency requires that subsidized transit projects meet certain performance thresholds. In this case, ticket sales are expected to pay for at least 40 percent of ferry operations.
The same performance measure is applied to the Oakland-Alameda Ferry and the Vallejo Ferry, also subsidized with Regional Measure 1 funds.
But while those ferries are meeting the threshold, MTC spokesman Randy Rentschler said, the fare box on the Harbor Bay Ferry has historically come up short.
Ticket sales contributed only 32 percent of the ferry's total revenue in 2002, 31 percent in 2003 and even less — 23 percent — last year when damage to the ferry terminal shut down the daily service for nearly five months.
Passengers were redirected to BART and the OaklandAlameda Ferry, which departs for San Francisco and Oakland's Jack London Square from across town on Main Street.
"It was hard to get those customers back," Norton said.
Norton said the city is working with the ferry's operator, Harbor Bay Maritime, to reduce costs and increase ridership on the ferry.
The service began in 1990 and serves mostly residents from Harbor Bay homes and other planned communities on Bay Farm Island.
MTC funding is guaranteed through June, but the agency has asked the city for a plan to meet — and now exceed — the fare-box threshold.
"We all want successful ferry services in the Bay Area," Rentschler said.
But the thresholds were developed — and articulated to ferry operators three years ago — to save the MTC from locking in a service that isn't essential, Rentschler said.
Tim Hoppen, chief executive officer of Harbor Bay Maritime, said the company has asked its crew to reduce their work weeks to 35 hours as a way of lowering costs.
The plan, he said, would not affect ferry service operations because crews work six-hour shifts but are paid for eight hours.
But the crew's union, the Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific, rejected the offer.
A call to the union's San Francisco office was not returned.
"We're just in the middle trying to make this thing work," Hoppen said.
Alameda-to -S.F. ferry funds in peril
Lagging ridership could cost Harbor Bay service its MTC subsidy, sink shuttle
By Susan McDonough, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
www.insidebayarea.com/
ALAMEDA — Declining ridership on the Harbor Bay Ferry may sink the service that shuttles hundreds of commuters daily between Alameda and San Francisco.
Alameda Interim City Manager Bill Norton said Friday that the ferry must boost fare revenue or lose critical funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
The ferry makes several trips across the San Francisco Bay daily and carries about 120,000 passengers annually between Alameda's Bay Farm Island and the San Francisco Ferry Building,
MTC subsidizes the ferry with Regional Measure 1 money, generated by toll increases at Bay Area bridges, which local voters approved in 1988 for public transit projects.
The agency requires that subsidized transit projects meet certain performance thresholds. In this case, ticket sales are expected to pay for at least 40 percent of ferry operations.
The same performance measure is applied to the Oakland-Alameda Ferry and the Vallejo Ferry, also subsidized with Regional Measure 1 funds.
But while those ferries are meeting the threshold, MTC spokesman Randy Rentschler said, the fare box on the Harbor Bay Ferry has historically come up short.
Ticket sales contributed only 32 percent of the ferry's total revenue in 2002, 31 percent in 2003 and even less — 23 percent — last year when damage to the ferry terminal shut down the daily service for nearly five months.
Passengers were redirected to BART and the OaklandAlameda Ferry, which departs for San Francisco and Oakland's Jack London Square from across town on Main Street.
"It was hard to get those customers back," Norton said.
Norton said the city is working with the ferry's operator, Harbor Bay Maritime, to reduce costs and increase ridership on the ferry.
The service began in 1990 and serves mostly residents from Harbor Bay homes and other planned communities on Bay Farm Island.
MTC funding is guaranteed through June, but the agency has asked the city for a plan to meet — and now exceed — the fare-box threshold.
"We all want successful ferry services in the Bay Area," Rentschler said.
But the thresholds were developed — and articulated to ferry operators three years ago — to save the MTC from locking in a service that isn't essential, Rentschler said.
Tim Hoppen, chief executive officer of Harbor Bay Maritime, said the company has asked its crew to reduce their work weeks to 35 hours as a way of lowering costs.
The plan, he said, would not affect ferry service operations because crews work six-hour shifts but are paid for eight hours.
But the crew's union, the Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific, rejected the offer.
A call to the union's San Francisco office was not returned.
"We're just in the middle trying to make this thing work," Hoppen said.