It’s happened to most of us: You rush to make the ferry at the north end, only to find that the boats are running late and you’ll be waiting at the dock. Or maybe you think you’ve barely made the boat, only to watch it stop loading and sail away on time but with room on board.

For years, the Vashon-Fauntleroy-Southworth route, dubbed the triangle route, has been plagued by its tight scheduled. As state officials note in an article on the front page this week, disruptions easily throw this popular route behind, and it’s hard to catch up, especially now that aging boats are being sailed at slower speeds. But would you choose more reliable service if also meant having slightly fewer sailings throughout the day? Many of us don’t like the sound of this trade-off.

Next fall, the triangle route will see one of its smaller, 87-car ferries replaced with a 124-car boat, giving the route two bigger boats and a smaller boat, rather that the current configuration of two smaller boats and one bigger boat. State ferry officials call the ferry reassignment an opportunity to rethink the problematic schedule. More car spaces overall mean the route will be able to carry more vehicles and sailings could be more spaced out, providing some flexibility that doesn’t exist now.

Some islanders who are paying attention, however, say a schedule rewrite isn’t the answer and could actually cause problems during commute hours if sailings are less frequent. They argue that the state should try to fix aging boats and improve loading and unloading efficiency at the Fauntleroy dock before it jumps to a schedule revision. The state, on the other hand, says the schedule, which has been in place for a decade at the north end, is simply too tight, and even those changes wouldn’t completely alleviate the delays.

We understand the triangle route is complex and inherently prone to delays, but as ferry riders ourselves, we’re also skeptical of a plan to space out sailings simply because we’ll have a larger boat. The route will carry 37 more cars among the three ferries, but we suspect that during busy hours more frequent sailings will do more to alleviate congestion than one bigger boat and the greater capacity won’t matter during times that boats don’t fill anyway.

It’s hard to know whether addressing some other issues affecting this route — such as trouble off-loading in West Seattle with no traffic control — will right the course or if a larger solution is really needed. As state officials work to rewrite the triangle route’s schedule, we hope they will continue to seek out funds to again station a police officer to direct traffic at Fauntleroy and to upgrade aging ferries — though replacing the Klahowya should be a great improvement. We also hope they truly listen to islanders’ comments on the schedule we know so well and craft a plan that will work during our high-traffic times. Perhaps someday we can have a route that offers both frequent and reliable sailings, not one or the other.