The Triangle route will return to three boat service this summer — at least, while the boats are available.

The huge announcement for Vashon and other ferry-reliant communities came from Governor Bob Ferguson on March 6. He will delay hybrid-electric conversion for two of the state’s largest ferries until after the 2026 World Cup.

That shift, he said, will free up enough boats for the full restoration of domestic ferry service this summer, after the Wenatchee ferry returns to service in June. That means three-boat restoration on the Triangle route, officials confirmed, but Washington State Ferries cautioned that occasional two-boat service may still be a reality for Vashon, given maintenance needs.

Amid staff shortages and an aging vessel fleet in the early days of the COVID pandemic, Washington State Ferries (WSF) reduced sailings on schedules across its system. Over the years, WSF has fully restored some routes, but not Vashon’s Triangle route, serving Southworth, Vashon and West Seattle, which has continued to run on a limited, two-boat schedule.

In late December 2023, WSF said that full restoration of its domestic routes, including the Triangle, would have to wait for years, with the first new boat or boats not arriving until 2028. Some relief came last year when WSF added a third vessel, often called the “ghost” boat, to make unscheduled runs when needed.

Ferguson’s announcement has changed the game. “The domestic service will be pre-pandemic this summer,” he said in a press conference on Thursday at Colman Dock in Seattle.

During a sailing from the island to West Seattle on Monday, island couple Lauren and Pamela Chinn shared happiness at the news.

There were times when staffing shortages on the Point Defiance – Tahlequah ferry route would cancel a run and leave the couple stuck on the south end, unable to come back from dinner, Lauren said. The ferry system disruptions “pretty much ended our social life,” he said, and made them glad they were already retired.

Improvements to the Triangle route starting last year helped. “When the ghost boat came, we were always thrilled,” Pamela said. And delaying the conversions in order to restore the route fully seems like a good compromise, Lauren said.

“We need more boats,” he said. “We also need less pollution, but we can get the boats back in service, and then maybe do the conversion one at a time.”

The news was heralded as a win for community action by Islanders for Ferry Action, the group convened by Vashon’s Chamber of Commerce to advocate for Vashon’s ferry service.

Islanders for Ferry Action mobilized thousands of calls, emails and meetings, said Amy Drayer, director of the group, and built coalitions with other communities across the Puget Sound. When she heard the news, Drayer said, “it took a minute” to sink in.

“We know it’s not going to be perfect, but it’s amazing to think that Vashon will be back on a three-boat [schedule],” she said. “The schedule is going to be better. Commerce will be better. People will be able to get on and off the island more easily.”

From the beginning, Drayer said, the group’s activism was about finding positive, practical solutions to the ferry crisis, rather than wallowing.

“We heard from Senator [Marko] Liias in November that all of this regional work is really what put this on the radar in the governor’s race,” Drayer said. “To have then the governor fulfill his promise … is an amazing feeling.”

Restoring the Triangle

On March 6, The Beachcomber asked the governor’s office to confirm that the Triangle route will return to three-boat service this summer.

”Yes, that’s exactly right,” governor’s office spokesperson Brionna Aho said in an email.

In an interview later that day, WSF Director of External Relations John Vezina clarified — and to a degree, sobered — the governor’s announcement.

“We hope to just restore [Vashon]” fully to a three-boat schedule on three Issaquah-class boats, Vezina said.

But that service relies on WSF having three Issaquah-class boats available. As Vezina has told The Beachcomber before, smaller vessels can serve as “ghost” boats but cannot handle full three-boat service.

Therein lies the rub: WSF is still analyzing how often it will actually have three boats of that size available to run the schedule, Vezina said, given maintenance that can take boats out of commission for a time.

“We know a lot of the time we’re going to have three Issaquah-class boats available,” he said.

But “when we don’t have a third Issaquah-class available, we may have to go to the improved two-boat [schedule], and one of the conversations we’ll be having with the community is … we don’t want to go back and forth [between two- and three-boat schedules], right? That’s going to be really confusing for people,” he said. “As the governor said, we’re going to have boats, we’re going to restore service. We’re still working on exactly what that service is going to look like for the Triangle.”

If and when the route goes back on two boat service, it will be on an improved, rewritten schedule based on the work of a consultant hired last year by WSF, and it will include the third unscheduled “ghost” boat, Vezina said.

“The focus is getting [Vashon] back on three boats,” he said. “But the service contingency plan, which we’ll send out [an update] in a couple weeks, has always said that if we lose a boat, we pull a boat from the Triangle to cover another route, if we don’t have any other vessels available.”

So in those situations, he said, “we want to give you the best possible two-boat service we can,” he said.

As part of his Thursday announcement, Ferguson was joined by Bremerton Mayor Greg Wheeler, who hailed the restoration of a second boat on the Seattle-Bremerton route. WSF’s service restoration plans have prioritized the Triangle route first in line for restoration, with the Seattle-Bremerton route coming afterward.

The Beachcomber asked Vezina: Has this new game plan changed WSF’s prioritization of Vashon’s route?

“It sort of has rendered the prioritization moot,” Vezina said. “In the past, we restored a route, waited three weeks to make sure it was restored, and then went to the next one. … [Now] we’re saying we think we can do all of them at the same time in the summer.”

WSF has crunched the numbers and determined they have the crewing and number of boats they need to pull this restoration off, he said. But boats will still have to come out periodically for maintenance. “How often can we have three Issaquah’s there — I hope [it] is the majority, if not all the time.”

Vezina said there’s optimism in the air among his colleagues about restoring service three years earlier than expected. “We’re really going to push hard. The residents on Vashon, Southworth and Fauntleroy deserve that.”

More work to come

Hybrid-electric conversion is a major plank in the state’s plans to cut carbon emissions. But it’s time-consuming and takes boats out of service, and WSF is already strapped for vessels.

The Wenatchee, the first Washington State Ferries vessel to undergo hybrid-electric conversion, will have been out of service at least 22 months by the time its conversion is completed this June, about 10 months longer than initially expected.

The pause on hybrid-electric conversion is unrelated to, and won’t affect WSF’s plans to build new electric ferries.

Washington State Ferries will open bids from prospective shipbuilders in early April to acquire as many as five new electric ferries, and aims to sign a contract with at least one successful bidder by late May. Ferguson said the state now expects to start getting those boats as early as 2029, a year later than initially stated last year.

Even with those new boats, WSF will need to replace an another 11 vessels before 2040 to keep the fleet modern and operating at full capacity.

Drayer, the director of Islanders for Ferry Action, said the group’s work is far from done. They will continue to push the legislature to help build boats and alternatives such as passenger-only ferry service.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen after Governor Ferguson’s stop-gap plan,” she said. “We know that we’re going to have to keep building boats.”

Governor Bob Ferguson speaks on March 6 at Colman Dock in Seattle. (TVW.org screenshot)