Washington State Ferries could use more boats, more staff, more money, officials tell winter community meeting’s first session

(Photo by Theresa Arbow-O’Connor)

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Washington State Ferries officials spent a lot of time at midday today talking about shortages and what’s being done to alleviate them, during the first of two sessions of their systemwide winter community meeting.

Some of the information came in presentations, and some in an extensive Q&A period that comprised 60 percent of the online meeting.

Almost 200 participants were signed in by the start of the meeting, facilitated by WSF’s Hadley Rodero. When polled to ask which route they used the most, the largest group – 25 percent – cited the San Juan Islands; the Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth route accounted for 14 percent of the respondents.

Of the five featured speakers from WSF, chief of staff Nicole McIntosh spoke first, with system updates. She noted the impending departure of ferries head Patty Rubstello (who is staying until a successor is found, McIntosh reiterated). Here are the 2023 stats she presented, including 70 life-saving events and 530 whale sightings:

Ridership is still below pre-pandemic levels:

Last year was up to 78 percent of pre-pandemic ridership, McIntosh said.

Second to speak was director of planning, customer, and government relations John Vezina, who talked about the newly released Service Contingency Plan. He said it was created once WSF realized they weren’t meeting the goals in their previous Service Restoration Plans, and that people needed a more realistic picture of where things stand, e.g.: “This is what we got and how we’re going to deploy it.” They have “no spare vessels” and don’t expect even the first new one to be completed any sooner than 2028.

Here’s how they’re deploying the fleet they have:

Restoring three-boat service to Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth remains a priority, and they’ll add one, unscheduled, whenever available:

Since they’re now able to cast a wider net for potential shipbuilders, they plan to put out an invitation to bid in April. They have 9 potential bidders, it was noted later. Regarding the personnel challenges, Vezina said they’ve been sounding the alarm for almost a decade, and they didn’t get the budget to address it – their funding is decided by elected state officials – but now that it’s at crisis level, that’s changing. He said crewing issues go beyond WSF – a 20,000-person shortage of mariners globally – per their conversations with other ferry systems such as BC Ferries and Alaska Marine Highway System.

The personnel-shortage discussion continued with director of marine operations Steve Nevey, who explained the career path and how it’s not just a matter of hiring a person and sticking them on a boat. They have enough deck personnel, he said, but are short in other categories higher up the ladder – licensed deck officers. “It’s not as simple as hiring a bunch of people (in the entry-level roles),” he said. A looming crisis is retirements of many captains and chief engineers:

Late winter and spring comprise WSF’s main hiring season, he added. They’re also focused on training to get more people into those higher-level categories:

Those programs have upped the rate at which they’ve been adding licensed deck officers, he said. (AB stands for “able-bodied sailor.”) He went through more details of the training programs and even a new scholarship program to help beef up the workforce:

“We see this as a long-term strategy” to help alleviate the officer shortage, Nevey explained. As for the people who keep the boats running, he also explained that career path – you need 1,800 days on a boat to become a chief engineer, for example – and some innovations to help that shortage:

And they’re working on programs to advance people along the career path too:

Next to speak was WSF director of finance and administration Todd Lamphere. He brought the numbers proposed by the governor in the budget process – still a work in progress as the Legislature drafts their version:

Here are highlights of what that money would go toward, including studying passenger-only service – which WSF used to operate – and studying the next class of vessels (which would replace the Issaquah class, the primary vessel class on the Triangle Route), plus electrification of the fleet and terminals:

The electrification topic was continued by terminal-engineering director David Sowers, who mentioned that electrification of Seattle and Bainbridge is in pre-design. Later this month they’re publishing a “request for information” on vessel-charging systems, a precursor to bidding. Vessel electrification is under way with M/V Wenatchee, and once that boat is back in service, M/V Tacoma will go in for that work. He also noted planning continues for the Fauntleroy terminal replacement:

“We’re making a lot of progress narrowing down the alternatives to look at,” was his only elaboration on Fauntleroy. That wrapped up the presentations, at which point the question/answer period opened, about 45 minutes into the meeting. Questions were submitted in writing via the videoconferencing system’s Q/A feature. We’re only noting the ones of potential relevance to local riders, but there were others regarding the routes outside Seattle.

Second question was, why did it take so long to seek bids for new ferries? McIntosh said they didn’t build new boats for a decade because they “lost (their) dedicated source of funding.” Then, as she recapped, their plan for Vigor> to build new ferries fell apart when an agreement wasn’t reached. But the new bidding method authorized by the Legislature will allow them to build two or three at a time, she added.

The third question asked about raising funding via wrapping boats with advertising; Vezina said

the Coca-Cola ad wrapping generated enough of an uproar – due to how it looked – that they are reevaluating policies, though he added that the revenue is certainly needed.

Fourth question was regarding the Triangle Route, and whether the schedule might be updated given that three-boat-service restoration isn’t likely to happen any time soon. Vezina called concerns “reasonable” and said that they’d have to do outreach before changes – plus WSF is currently down to one service planner and they’d need more help there, as the San Juan Islands schedule needs attention first. “As soon as we have the service planning capacity … we will turn our attention to rewriting the two-boat schedule (for the Triangle Route).” The next question was related – what about adding more King County passenger-ferry service on the Triangle Route? Vezina mentioned the recent Vashon survey. by King County, and “real legislative interest” in making it happen. The state is helping fund more passenger service to Bremerton while WSF is down to one-boat service, so it would likely be stopgap funding like that, until full service on Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth is restored.

Next question, what about selling surplus old ferries? Two of the three they currently are trying to unload may be moved by month’s end, Lamphere said, and the buyer is in fact currently in town as they work out a plan. On the personnel topic, onr person – apparently a WSF employee – asked why shifts are so frequently changed, potentially causing sleep issues among other problems for employees. Nevey said the scheduling issue is “complex” and noted that “every boat has a different running schedule” and that scheduling is indeed “not conducive to work-life balance” but WSF is “working on” the issue. There were other questions about recruitment – yes, it’s being done at schools, too, said McIntosh – and yes, labor unions are helping. What about retention? Nevey was asked. “For the last few years, we’ve been working to change the culture,” he said, and the schedule-improvement work should help. But retirements remain the largest category of employee loss, he added, along with “people coming in fresh and seeing the work isn’t what they thought it would be.”

Rider-alert messages sometimes give incorrect information, another attendee said, more a comment than a question. Vezina acknowledged that they could do a better job with messaging. He said the customer-service team works hard to keep track of what’s happening all around the system, and things change, so messaging is sometimes difficult.

Will the new Fauntleroy terminal be built with electrification? Will the ferries on the Triangle Route be electrified? Short answer, yes, said Sowers, and the Southworth terminal, too. “There’s still some discussion of whether we would electrify Vashon or not – I think the answer is no, but we’re still looking at that.” But that’s closer to the end of the decade than other routes, he cautioned.

Elaborating on electrification, Lamphere said it will ultimately lead to fuel savings. And it’s the main reason behind the increase in WSF capital funding proposed by the governor.

Back to staffing, Nevey said they’re looking at new ways to avoid crew shortages, such as more routinely staffing above Coast Guard minimum. McIntosh fielded another staffing question – what toll did the COVID-vaccine mandate take? McIntosh said they lost 120 people, and they’ve hired back “a few of those,” but that overall hiring has surpassed that number – 180 new hires last year alone, as an earlier slide showed.

Will they do another origin/destination study (here’s the one from 2013) any time soon? Vezina’s long answer boiled down to, not any time soon, but they did do a precursor demographic study recently. When is the next fare increase? That depends on what the Legislature decides regarding the percentage of WSF funding that should come from fares – once they know that, if a fare change would be required, they work with the state Transportation Commission on that.

What can people do to support WSF’s efforts at improvement? Tell your state legislators to support the system, McIntosh said. That was the final question in the meeting, which ran for two hours, with an hour and a quarter of that devoted to Q/A; if you missed it, you can attend a second session, also online, tomorrow (Thursday, January 18) at 6 pm – find the registration link here. WSF promises to post a recording of this meeting (and tomorrow’s) on the WSF website.

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