Ferry an example of transportation planning problems
I wrote last month about the many problems confronting Oakland’s transportation planning process. With civic leaders pushing new ballparks, my thoughts turned to the transportation aspects of planning a major entertainment destination. Two of the announced sites were West of Jack London Square, including a site called Jack London North that has stirred significant interest (and is the most popular plan in a poll at Oakland Local). But it poses some serious transportation access problems, including being certainly outside of what can be considered reasonable walking distance from BART (as is AT&T Park in San Francisco, of course). Without an up-to-date downtown transportation plan or even summary information, it’s hard to blame decision-makers for not knowing the transportation context of grand plans. But what is really striking is how important many downtown plans consider ferry service to be, from Jack London Square developments to the proposed shuttle service, yet those making the plans clearly are unaware of the ferry’s serious shortcomings, including the likelihood that Oakland will lose its ferry service in five years.
All the information below can be found in WETA’s Transition Plan.
The City of Alameda, in partnership with the Port of Oakland and Alameda County (ACTIA), provides a commuter ferry to San Francisco called the Alameda – Oakland Ferry. Its operations are contracted to Blue & Gold Fleets, using two publicly-owned ferries. Alameda, like many other cities, subsidizes this transit service out of its General Fund, and the Port of Oakland also contributes a significant sum yearly out of general revenues, for a total subsidy of about four million dollars. Next year, the new Water Emergency Transit Authority will take over operating the service, but WETA is only committed to maintain current service for five years. So here’s the problem: the Port doesn’t really want to keep paying, and WETA wants to expand service to South San Francisco, which will require increased subsidy. With Port and City budgets squeezed, the future of ferry service is very much up in the air.
The present state of ferry service is also a big problem. Everyone seems to assume that people use the ferry, but the truth is that almost nobody rides it. Ridership declined ten percent from 1997 to 2008, and has dropped 15% in the current fiscal year. The ferry’s maximum roundtrip capacity is only 2328 passengers a day,* and average daily ridership is a pitiful 640 people**, with two-thirds of commuters coming from Alameda (though most weekend trips originate in Oakland). Because Jack London Square and Alameda are so far from BART, and SF’s Ferry Terminal is in a major job center, there are several thousand people that could use the ferry to commute, but they don’t. The ferry is slow, expensive, and frankly, unpleasant to ride. There’s no signage, no ferry employees outside of the ferry itself, no waiting area, the ferries’ interiors are shabby, and the snacks and alcohol bar is woefully underutilized. On top of that, tickets are expensive. And what kind of “emergency” transit closes during a rainstorm? Unless WETA addresses these problems, ferry ridership can’t increase significantly enough for the ferry to be a real transit option.
If City officials are going to say that Jack London Square’s ferry pier is a transportation option, or attempt to make any plans including it, Oakland must determine the future of the ferry. The City should ask the Port and Alameda to explain their plans for ferry subsidy over the next ten years. Oakland should tell WETA in no uncertain terms that if they want Oakland to commit to long-term funding, WETA’s multimillion-dollar planned investments in Berkeley and South SF should be matched by investments in Oakland. To determine how much of a commitment public agencies should make, Oakland should also find out what plans WETA has for increasing ferry ridership, because current levels don’t justify a continued subsidy. Local leaders are making plans based around a ferry service that is clearly failing, with no plan to improve it or to ensure it doesn’t disappear. Burdened by a chaotic and unfocused transportation bureaucracy and decision-making structure, it’s unclear who is keeping an eye on Oakland’s transit infrastructure, even as it slips away.
* 388 passengers on the largest ferry, times the six round-trips each workday, is 2328 passengers at maximum capacity.
** 466,818 trips in FY 2007-2008, divided by 365 days, divided by two trips/person, means an average of only 640 people rode the ferry each day during that period. Remember, this includes Alameda as well as Oakland; Alameda passengers represent about 2/3s of the riders, so the Jack London Square ferry terminal is only serving about 220 people on an average day.
I wrote last month about the many problems confronting Oakland’s transportation planning process. With civic leaders pushing new ballparks, my thoughts turned to the transportation aspects of planning a major entertainment destination. Two of the announced sites were West of Jack London Square, including a site called Jack London North that has stirred significant interest (and is the most popular plan in a poll at Oakland Local). But it poses some serious transportation access problems, including being certainly outside of what can be considered reasonable walking distance from BART (as is AT&T Park in San Francisco, of course). Without an up-to-date downtown transportation plan or even summary information, it’s hard to blame decision-makers for not knowing the transportation context of grand plans. But what is really striking is how important many downtown plans consider ferry service to be, from Jack London Square developments to the proposed shuttle service, yet those making the plans clearly are unaware of the ferry’s serious shortcomings, including the likelihood that Oakland will lose its ferry service in five years.
All the information below can be found in WETA’s Transition Plan.
The City of Alameda, in partnership with the Port of Oakland and Alameda County (ACTIA), provides a commuter ferry to San Francisco called the Alameda – Oakland Ferry. Its operations are contracted to Blue & Gold Fleets, using two publicly-owned ferries. Alameda, like many other cities, subsidizes this transit service out of its General Fund, and the Port of Oakland also contributes a significant sum yearly out of general revenues, for a total subsidy of about four million dollars. Next year, the new Water Emergency Transit Authority will take over operating the service, but WETA is only committed to maintain current service for five years. So here’s the problem: the Port doesn’t want to keep paying, and WETA wants to expand service to South San Francisco, which will require increased subsidy. With Port and City budgets squeezed, the future of ferry service is very much up in the air.
The present state of ferry service is also a big problem. Everyone seems to assume that people use the ferry, but the truth is that almost nobody rides it. Ridership declined ten percent from 1997 to 2008, and has dropped 15% in the current fiscal year. The ferry’s maximum roundtrip capacity is only 2328 passengers a day,* and average daily ridership is a pitiful 640 people**, with two-thirds of commuters coming from Alameda (though most weekend trips originate in Oakland). Because Jack London Square and Alameda are so far from BART, and SF’s Ferry Terminal is in a major job center, there are several thousand people that could use the ferry to commute, but they don’t. The ferry is slow, expensive, and frankly, unpleasant to ride. There’s no signage, no ferry employees outside of the ferry itself, no waiting area, the ferries’ interiors are shabby, and the snacks and alcohol bar is woefully underutilized. On top of that, tickets are expensive. And what kind of “emergency” transit closes during a rainstorm? Unless WETA addresses these problems, ferry ridership can’t increase significantly enough for the ferry to be a real transit option.
If City officials are going to say that Jack London Square’s ferry pier is a transportation option, or attempt to make any plans including it, Oakland must determine the future of the ferry. The City should ask the Port and Alameda to explain their plans for ferry subsidy over the next ten years. Oakland should tell WETA in no uncertain terms that if they want Oakland to commit to long-term funding, WETA’s multimillion-dollar planned investments in Berkeley and South San Francisco should be matched by investments in Oakland. To determine how much of a commitment public agencies should make, Oakland should also find out what plans WETA has for increasing ferry ridership, because current levels don’t justify a continued subsidy. Local leaders are making plans based around a ferry service that is clearly failing, with no plan to improve it or to ensure it doesn’t disappear. Burdened by a chaotic and unfocused transportation bureaucracy and decision-making structure, it’s unclear who is keeping an eye on Oakland’s transit infrastructure, even as it slips away.
* 388 passengers on the largest ferry, times the six round-trips each workday, is 2328 passengers at maximum capacity.
** 466,818 trips in FY 2007-2008, divided by 365 days, divided by two trips/person, means an average of only 640 people rode the ferry each day during that period. Remember, this includes Alameda as well as Oakland; Alameda passengers represent about 2/3s of the riders, so the Jack London Square ferry terminal is only serving about 220 people on an average day.
OMG, the ferry SUXXX!1
Seriously, though. I took the ferry a few months ago, and pretty much every single thing about the experience was horrible.
funny, I enjoyed a recent trip from SF back to Oakland in midday, but that was entertainment not serious commuting. And that is I think the problem. The per rider cost is crazy compared to either AC Transbay or BART but ferry supporters (who I suspect mostly drive) think of the ferry as Disney transit.
DTO-
Good analysis and discussion. Lots of useful information. I disagree with you on a few points, however.
First, the decision to implement the Broadway Shuttle does not indicate a lack of awareness about the Ferry’s deficiencies, but rather represents an effort to address one of its shortcomings. Currently, there is no frequent and cheap “last mile” transit service to connect commuters from the Jack London ferry station to Oakland’s downtown offices. The Broadway Shuttle will be free and stop at Jack London Square every 10 minutes during commute hours. IT will take ferry passengers up Broadway to Chinatown, Old Oakland, City Center, Uptown and the Lake Merritt Financial District. Hopefully the Broadway Shuttle will increase ferry ridership by making it more convenient and cheaper to commute from Alameda to downtown Oakland via the ferry and shuttle.
Also, while you point out some clear examples of how the ferry service can be improved, your analysis is not complete enough to support your contention that the service is a transit failure. Your lone performance measure is number of passengers (640 daily). But that number needs to be put into context to mean anything. What is the cost per rider? What percentage of the operating cost is recouped in fares (Farebox Recovery Ratio)? How many passengers ride the ferry as a percentage of capacity? And how do these numbers stack up to other area transit systems, i.e. BART, AC Transit and Capital Corridor?
Based on the information in your post, here is what the reader can conclude:
Total cost per trip: $14.78
Farebox Recovery Ratio: 42%
Ridership as a percentage of capacity: 27% (640/2328)
How these numbers compare to BART, AC Transit and Capital Corridor? Perhaps not favorably, in which case you are fair to conclude that the “state of the ferry is a problem.” But you need to first provide this comparative data.
PS research on the internet indicates BART’s fairbox recovery is 53% and cost per passenger is around $6-$7. I’m curious to know what numbers are for AC Transit and Capital Corridor.
Zach Seal
FAIL
Zach, I appreciate that the Broadway Shuttle could help Oakland’s ferry, but without WETA making major changes to improve ferry service, a shuttle can’t do very much. There is a connection between the ferry and the heart of downtown already, it’s the 72R bus, which runs every twelve minutes during commute hours. The problem with the ferry is that it’s slow, expensive, and unpleasant, not that it isn’t well-located. And think about it – why would anyone take the ferry from SF to JLS to then go to City Center? It would be twenty minutes faster and $3 cheaper to take BART, and that’s not even including the last-mile connection. IF BAAQMD is subsidizing a shuttle so that it serves the ferry, they’re uninformed about the ferry’s present use and future potential. Fortunately, there are many other good reasons to run a shuttle on Broadway.
WIth only 220 people using the Oakland ferry pier on an average day, and ridership dropping both long-term and short-term, the ferry is a failure by any measurement. But, yes, the ferry is the most expensive per-passenger transit service in the region, according to the MTC. Oakland’s million-dollar subsidy is clearly not worth it, and in the absence of commitments from WETA to invest in and improve ferry service, Oakland’s subsidy should be directed toward transit systems with more potential, such as a Broadway shuttle.
Farebox recovery ratio is actually an extremely poor way to measure transit subsidy and efficiency. It arbitrarily favors certain modes over others by failing to consider capital costs. So, for example, while BART, a capital intensive system, has a higher farebox recovery ratio than, say, AC Transit, once you take capital costs into account, the per trip public subsidy is roughly triple that of AC Transit. Caltrain’s is double BART’s. And the ferry is higher than any of them. All this data is readily available in MTC documents and the National Transit Database.
I completely fail to see how the Broadway shuttle will do anything to help the ferry. It doesn’t even go to the ferry, it simply replicates an existing bus route that stops nearby and already runs as frequently as the shuttle is planned to.
Ferries as real transit can only work under special circumstances where there is either significant density and/or lack of a faster alternative to support frequent service–Treasure Island, Alameda Point, Redwood City Salt Works, and Larkspur all come to mind. The JLS ferry is not real transit; it costs double that of BART and the O for considerably less service and no real time savings. What it all comes down to is just a bad attempt by JLS to grab a few tourists from San Francisco, when the reality is that there’s no way tourists would choose JLS over Sausalito or Tiburon for a ferry getaway.
People don’t realize there is free parking for the ferry, and if you buy a book of tickets it’s not as expensive as it first appears. I do think it is not very user friendly, e.g. the waiting line is in the elements, there is no explanation of how/where to purchase tickets, etc. A bit of education and marketing would go a really long way.
Also, isn’t the fact that the ferry goes from Alameda to Oakland one of the big selling features SunCal is using to pitch is Alameda Point projects? If there is no ferry, that project is even more unattractive when combined with the revenue Alameda will lose.
As a frequent sightseer in JLS, there is no indications of any suitable ferry service. Typical city/port admin. Qualify for various subsideis but do NOTHING in support of real Oaklanders who might take a ferry to SF. HA
The ferry doesn’t really go from Alameda to Oakland, it goes from Alameda and Oakland to SF. In one direction, you’d have to go to SF in the middle. My understanding is that the Alameda Point development is planning a BRT system, not a new ferry. That seems like a better bet. If the ferry depends on free parking, that’s not so great. And free parking, of course, isn’t free – who is paying for the land? Is the ferry paying Oakland parking tax?
WETA can improve some of the more user-unfriendly elements of the ferry, and, at a minimum, should do so immediately if they expect Oakland to continue subsidizing the ferry. But it’s going to be hard to prove that the ferry is the best use of a yearly million-dollar investment.
This is an updated version of my comment to the SFGate blog post.
I’ll have to disagree with VSmoothe in that I ride the ferry every couple of weeks to SF and almost everything about the experience is so much better than BART. Those that ride the ferry love it and would be very sad if it was discontinued – just ask anyone who takes the ferry to Bay Farm Island or from Alameda to Oakland. But for us 510 crowd it has the huge disadvantage that it takes 30 minutes from departure and when you add an extra 10 minutes to make sure you’re on board before they leave, well that’s just a lot of extra time out of your day each way vs. BART. Price wise when you include the free 12-hour parking at Washington St which would cost $5 per day at West Oakland it is actually either the same or cheaper compared to BART depending on how many tickets you buy at a time ($90 for 20 tickets, further discount for more). I think if the ferry folks actually advertised and highlighted the free parking they would get many more riders. And if they could run an extra ferry that stopped at Alameda first you might be able to provide a much faster route to SF that was more competitive with BART (at least for those that don’t need to jump on Muni or BART at the other end).
The ferry is actually heavily utilized during commute hours by riders from Alameda – they pretty much fill up the ferry downstairs and most of the upstairs but you can still always find a seat, get some coffee, eat a snack or chill (often literally) outside if you want. SO much nicer than the BART experience where you are more likely to be sniffing someones armpit the whole way unless you leave after 9:30a. Although I’m spending 40 minutes on the ferry I can actually bust out my laptop and usually finish off all my morning email before arriving to SF. Something you can only do on BART if you are getting on way south of downtown (and you probably wont have a wireless signal for most of the journey anyway).
Also be aware that the ferry is always cited as a offset for parking demand in environmental impact studies. Its existence saves developers from providing a significant amount of extra parking spaces per year and that is real value to developers such as JLS Partners who invest in downtown development. Over in Alameda it is even more important because it significantly reduces the number of cars going through the tube towards BART and saves them investing in extra car infrastructure.
So the reason I don’t ride the ferry every day? Its that extra 30 minutes travel time vs. BART – to get to work by 9am on BART I can leave my front door at 8:30am, for the ferry I have to leave at least 40 minutes earlier, otherwise I’ll miss the ferry and end up turning up at work at 10am which is unfortunately unacceptable for my schedule. If there was a slightly later or faster ferry it would be a lot different. Even though I don’t drive I would be willing to pay the extra to get the ferry.
PS. Isn’t BART subsidized too? Car owners may bitch about that as well but when the bridge is out everyone realizes just how important BART is, and when BART is not available everyone driving realizes just how many cars it is keeping off the road!
Of course BART is subsidized – all transportation is, including cars. But the ferry’s subsidy is outrageously high, and what is Oakland getting for its million dollars a year? Not enough to justify that much money. The fact that the little-used ferry is cited as an offset to parking demand shows how little policymakers know about the ferry – that is the point of this post. People seem to think that it’s used, but the fact is that it’s not, and can’t be used very substantially without major changes. If the ferry depends on free parking, it’s not very environmentally-friendly either, and inherently limited by the demands of car storage as well as the size of the ferries themselves (340 – 388 passengers).
V –
The Broadway Shuttle will stop at the intersection of Embarcadero & Broadway, an easy and very short walk from the ferry station at Clay Street. A wayfinding sign(s) will guide ferry passengers through the existing pedestrian walkway to the shuttle stop.
Regarding duplication of existing service, the Broadway Shuttle will provide different service from AC Transit Line 72 in at least two important ways. First, the Broadway Shuttle will be free; the 72 costs $4 roundtrip. This amounts to a weekly savings of $20 for commuters. Second, the 72 turns west on 20th. The Broadway Shuttle will continue north on Broadway to Grand Ave, and will also travel on Webster to serve the office buildings in the Lake Merritt Financial District.
Regarding the intent of DTO’s orignal post, several interesting points have been made about how ferry service can be improved.
The ferry is a much better comute than driving or BART…..20 minutes you are there and the people you meet along the way become friends. How many people have you met on Bart who invites you to their house at Cristmas or you buy something for their birthday. I know about my friends grandbaby…I went to happy hour with some friends from the ferry the day before her husband died and met him…I know if need something someone on the ferry is there for me. The bigest proplem with Oakand commuters are they don’t know about it…If you have flexible hours the ferry is the best commute in the Bay Area.