Researchers from the University of Washington are taking a close look at the Fauntleroy dock, while at the same time some islanders have taken matters into their own hands and devised a new ferry schedule model they say will radically improve efficiency and better serve riders.

In June, a team of professors and graduate students at The Evans School of Public Policy and Governance began evaluating ticketing and loading procedures at the West Seattle ferry dock. Funded by the state legislature at a cost of $75,000, researchers have worked in consultation with Washington State Ferries (WSF) and other stakeholders such as the Triangle Task Force, local ferry advisory committees, WSF employees and the public, according to principal investigator Alison Cullen.

“We gathered information from previous work, what data we could get our hands on [as well as] site visits, [observing] unloaded ferries and how people get through the toll booth to try to understand what characteristics the system achieves,” she said.

The research team is comparing its findings to the legislature’s 17 performance measures for the ferry system, among them the timely completion of capital projects on budget, service reliability and passenger satisfaction. Additionally, the team has prioritized the assessment of WSF’s ability to meet criteria such as passenger demand, equity in wait times and safety.

“There’s an appreciation in the community for the work that WSF does and the number of people moved through this system in a day, in a month,” said Cullen, adding that most agree proficient service depends on boats of adequate sizes making regular arrivals and departures at expected times.

“The system has a lot of characteristics — the certain size of boats, the certain size of docks — that all kind of trade off of each other.”

Cullen said that WSF has been cooperative, providing information and data that the research team has requested, as well as directing them to other sources and inviting them to attend open houses. The Evans School findings are expected to be submitted to the legislature and made available to the public in December.

“We’re excited to see the Evans School’s recommendations for the route and will consider each one,” said John Vezina, WSF’s director of government relations, in an email. “They aren’t focusing on the route’s schedules, so it won’t impact the new route schedule we finalize in December, but we’re hopeful their recommendations to the legislature will suggest additional ways we can improve our service there.”

Stephanie Cirkovich, WSF’s director of community services and planning, said the dock is a vital component of the schedule drafting process. The first two schedule drafts have drawn the ire of many islanders concerned by “layover” trips to Southworth and longer gaps between off-peak sailings.

“‘Triangle route’ schedules haven’t had a major overhaul in many years, which exacerbates the challenges of the Fauntleroy dock and leads to many of the complaints that we’ve been hearing from our Vashon customers about the route’s performance for the past several seasons,” she wrote in an email. “I’m very confident in my staff’s ability to work together with the community to revise the schedules and make improvements that will make a difference.”

Seeking to best optimize the current ferry system and fulfill WSF’s comprehensive service objectives, two islanders have issued separate proposals for an alternating schedule model resembling a pendulum, with boats departing from Fauntleroy and traveling to Vashon followed by Southworth, then returning to Vashon and back to Fauntleroy.

Theo Eicher, professor of economics at the University of Washington, co-authored a study of the Fauntleroy dock examining implications for the state posed by long wait lines and ferry delays. It called for the better utilization of technology such as the Good To Go! system and filling boats to capacity with departures every 30 minutes, recommending the pendulum route among the three ports as a method to relieve the bottlenecking that often occurs in West Seattle.

Islander Jar Lyons, a software engineer and Eicher’s brother-in-law, is a proponent of the pendulum schedule, which he said will increase service during peak and rush hour sailings, at the expense of single destination crossings, which would be eliminated.

“This route will serve more cars because the boats will naturally load, and because there are more sailings per period, it will actually probably result in more boat sailings per day and more cars delivered,” he said.

Lyons said that the rate in which cars move past the booth at Fauntleroy is a tremendous problem, made worse by the dock’s size. Unlike Southworth, he said, Fauntleroy does not present a large enough staging area for vehicles, and thus cannot manage a significant amount of traffic.

WSF Spokesperson Hadley Rodero said that one flaw of the pendulum model is that it will not allow ferries to have necessary dwell time at the dock to load and unload walk-on passengers and vehicles.

“That’s something our schedule planners are concerned about — we like the concept and are interested in the concept, but we need to make sure that there is enough time to load and unload,” she said.

Eicher’s study is available online.

Steve Stockett, who owns Froggsong Gardens, said that he has spent “over $100,000 in solution design and intellectual property development” to prepare his own version of a 24-hour pendulum model schedule. He commissioned tech company Zone24/7, based out of California, to design hardware and software over the last 18 months that — among other advancements — would modernize fare collection, process data and create personal mobile apps; he said the suite of upgrades would be ready for a pilot program as early as mid-2019, pending legislative approval.

“You can’t transport as many people reliably with another option without a pendulum,” he said, naming some of the benefits, which include reliable service, separation of boats to eliminate overcrowding at Fauntleroy, and a faster boat run cycle. Further, he added that the pendulum schedule would not disrupt the current shift structure for WSF employees and that in the pendulum model, if boats were to uniformly fall behind schedule, customers would not be as widely affected as they are today, with wait times that he said range from an average of 15 to 90 minutes. He envisions a system where ferries depart in 25, 30 or 35-minute intervals, decided by the volume of traffic at given times throughout the day.

Praising WSF, Stockett said he believes the problems facing the triangle route are complex and will require the full participation of legislators, state agencies and the public in order to make meaningful improvements. He said he is confident all parties can respectfully work together to evaluate choices and to ultimately create a better system.

“The only way a 30-minute pendulum departure schedule is going to happen is if the public — and WSF staff — believe that there are well thought-out solutions [worth taking] the time to understand and publicly agree with,” he said.

WSF’S next draft schedule will be released in October ahead of a public meeting to discuss it with islanders from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 24, at Vashon High School.