Days after Washington State Ferries tested a new approach to loading boats, the Triangle Route went down to a two-boat schedule and problems abounded.
On Sunday, the Kitsap, a boat on the Seattle-Bremerton route broke a crankshaft, according to the Kitsap Sun. It was taken away to be repaired, and the Sealth was removed from the Triangle Route to replace it. That same day, wait times to catch a boat at Fauntleroy exceeded two hours, and during Monday’s evening commute, islanders shared complaints on social media that boats were leaving with many empty spaces. Wait times at Fauntleroy exceeded one hour that night.
It is not known how long the route will be limited to two boats as all other replacements are undergoing scheduled maintenance and aren’t expected to be in service until next week. However, on Tuesday, Washington State Ferries spokesman Ian Sterling said officials were working on “a very creative plan” to return the three-boat schedule to the Triangle Route by Memorial Day weekend.
Meanwhile, Ferries officials are still evaluating data from last week’s pilot program They say they are “cautiously optimistic” that the plan will improve some of the difficulties at Fauntleroy during peak travel times.
This week, Ferries will continue to evaluate data gathered from the four-day trial, WSF Communications Manager Brian Mannion said. In particular, ferry officials will evaluate the number of spaces filled on each boat compared to the total of cars that past through the tollbooth at peak demand. By this Friday, he said, WSF should have the official findings from the pilot effort and be able to announce next steps.
Both Mannion and Director of Operations Greg Faust said they had challenges last week, among them drivers that needed to change their long-established patterns and a series of problems on Wednesday that Faust called “death by a 1,000 cuts.” But by Thursday, both men said they felt like they were seeing genuine progress — and that they had learned some important lessons along the way.
The aim of the pilot program was to determine if WSF could move four cars per minute past the tollbooth at peak time instead of the current three. This change should help reduce the number of empty spaces on boats that leave before they are full — though cars are waiting — in order to stay on schedule. But they also said the pilot program measures alone would not fully address that issue.
“No days did we eliminate all the empty spaces,” Mannion said. “I don’t think we are going to see that no matter what we do at the tollbooths.”
Among the lessons learned is that communication among WSF personnel is instrumental in making the piloted system work.
“A lot is riding on communication to get people through,” Faust stressed.
Also, important, they said, is more aggressively pulling drivers out of the single line of traffic to get to different destinations. But they also noted the constraints they are facing and that there is no “silver bullet” that will fix everything.
“We are trying to use 1957 infrastructure more efficiently to meet 2017 demands,” Mannion said.
— Susan Riemer
