By ANNELI FOGT

Editor

Islanders were left waiting in line for ferries for hours last week after the Issaquah was taken out of service due to an electrical issue. More than just a frustrating inconvenience, the incident was indicitive of the larger problems facing the state’s aging ferry system.

Washington State Ferries (WSF) currently has 24 ferries, nine of which are between the ages of 40 and 60 years old, according to the WSF website. The aging vessels are in need of being retired and replaced, but building nine new boats comes with “a huge price tag,” according to WSF chief Lynne Griffith, and the department is under “instruction from the legislature to be in a sustaining plan,” not expanding.

The department did receive $602 million in July as part of the state’s sweeping transportation package called Connecting Washington, and $122 million of the package funds will be used to build a fourth Olympic-size ferry for use on the Bremerton/Seattle and Anacortes/San Juan routes. Olympic-class boats are the fleet’s newest class with the first being introduced to service in June 2014 on the Mukilteo/Clinton route, and a second in June of this year on the Anacortes/San Juan Islands route. The third will be complete in 2017 and will serve the Seattle/Bremerton route, and the fourth is scheduled for completion in 2018, according to the WSF website. Griffith said none of the new boats or the ones they are replacing can be used on the triangle routes because they are too big to fit into the Fauntleroy dock.

Sen. Sharon Nelson (D-Maury Island) told The Beachcomber last week that the legislature’s funding of the four boats is “a major step forward” in the ferry system’s funding.

“When I came onto the Senate in 2007, we were pulling boats and barely had enough, so now to have new ones, that’s a major step,” Nelson said.

She states that the move is a result of the legislature realizing how important the ferries are to the state, and that she hopes the fourth Olympic-class boat won’t be the last new boat the system sees. But, Griffith pointed out that beyond the Olympic-class vessels, there are “no other vessels funded at this time.” She continued to say she is appreciative of the legislature’s move to grant WSF the $602 million, and that the transportation package gives the department a stability it has not had since the passage of Initiative 695 in 1999, which abolished the state’s car tab tax and WSF funding with it.

“When Initiative 695 occurred, we lost significant funding,” Griffith said. “That’s a difficult situation to plan around, and that has come into play when talking about replacing vessels. (Ferries) take around three years to build, and the state has now funded one more boat. To fund four or five at once would be huge price tag.”

She said that the department’s finances were further stressed by the recession, and that WSF now has a “fairly constrained view” of the future.

“We have one more vessel and two terminals getting replaced,” Griffith said. “What I want to say is that we have a transportation package that (WSF) benefits from. Even though it may not be enough, I don’t want the message to the legislature to be, ‘Hey, you didn’t do enough.’”

But the new Olympic-class boats do not fix the bigger problem of too many aging vessels, which Griffith admitted.

“We want to continue building,” she said. “Even though the Olympic class is great, there are vessels reaching 60 years soon. We would like a conversation (with the legislature) about diversifying capital funding. We have a backlog on (preservation and midlife work), and it’s a byproduct of funding constraints and maybe some shipyard capacity issues. We might be our worst enemy because with the aging of the fleet, we have more and more unplanned emergency repairs that may disrupt planned maintenance.”

And that is what happened last week and caused delays that left some islanders waiting for a ferry for two or three hours. When the Issaquah was taken out of service last Sunday, Monday and most of Tuesday for the unplanned emergency, the 61-year-old Evergreen State and the Tillikum were left on the route, reducing the normally three-boat weekday schedule to two boats. It was then emergency mode as electricians and mechanics worked to find out what was wrong with the Issaquah. The fleet’s other Issaquah-class boat assigned to the triangle route, the Cathlamet, was in maintenance at the time of the breakdown, according to WSF’s Maintenance, Dry Dock and Inspection Needs documents. The only boat that was available for standby service was the 64-car Salish, less than half the capacity of the Issaquah.

“A lot of the fleet is out on emergency repairs, at least five or six boats,” islander Greg Beardsley said last week. “The Salish is the only one available that is functionally manned. Vashon gets the short straw because we are the only route with three boats, so if we lose a boat we only lose one-third of our service, whereas everyone else would lose half.”

Beardsley went on to explain that WSF simply needs more ferries and that the fleet is aging “extremely fast.” The Tacoma, one of the fleet’s largest vessels that usually serves the Seattle/Bainbridge route, suffered an electrical explosion last year and returned to service in May. The Elwha, a ferry that runs the San Juan route, remains out of service after needing engine repairs in July.

“I mean, you’ve got these things running nearly 24 hours a day, seven days a week, some 365 days a year. They’re going to break,” Beardsley said. “Unfortunately, when (a ferry has) something wrong, it causes a catastrophic vessel reorganization.”

WSF has protocols in place for service disruptions to determine which boat will replace one that is out of service. According to these documents, an Evergreen State Class boat such as the Evergreen State or the Tillikum would be the triangle route’s backup. However, last week, both of those two boats were already running the regular triangle route.

“It’s very complex,” Beardsley said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, my car isn’t working, I’ll just steal my wife’s car,’ because each boat is different and has different safety procedures to be familiar with and different crew requirements.”

Griffith said WSF has “made a fair amount of noise” over having viable, appropriately sized backup vessels.

“We had the Hiyu, but it’s just not viable backup because of its size and inability to carry large trucks,” she said. “We will bring (the need) up again in a supplemental budget that will be dealt with when the legislative session convenes (in January 2016). We have our fingers crossed, hoping for Tillikum to become the viable backup. It’s in the best shape.”

But beyond the need to build more boats, many of the triangle route’s delay problems come from the heavy vehicle traffic on the route, especially at Vashon. WSF On-Time Performance reports show that the Fauntleroy/Vashon route had the highest number of delayed sailings in September due to heavy traffic. In that month, 50 sailings were delayed due to heavy traffic; another 43 are classified as “other departure delays,” meaning vessel congestion, terminal closures or rescue incidents contributed to the late sailing, and still another 53 are classified as “accumulated delays,” meaning they were delayed due to earlier medical, weather, mechanical or traffic issues. Altogether, the documents show that the Fauntleroy/Vashon route had 92 percent of its sailings leave “on-time.”

However, the Southworth/Vashon route has the lowest percentage of on-time departures over all the department’s routes for the month of September. The WSF report shows that 89.8 percent of the Southworth to Vashon sailings were on-time.

Once the state legislature begins its session, Griffith said she is hoping to finally get the Evergreen State retired once the Tillikum is secured as a backup boat and the Sealth takes over its routes.

“We will need to make the case for investment in newer vessels,” Griffith said. “It’s still a priority, and we need to have a conversation with the legislature to let them know its still very much a top priority. This is something we’re going to have to dig into. The long-term plan will have a replacement schedule, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we will have the funds.”