Anyone have an extra bottle of crystal ball polish?

In last week’s editorial, The Beachcomber shared several hopes and predictions for 2024, including that transportation on-and-off on the island would evolve and improve this year — thanks in no small part to the advocacy of islanders fed up with the deficiencies of our current Washington State Ferries (WSF) system.

We wrote that it was unclear whether lasting three-boat service would return to the Triangle this year. Well, on the same day that editorial hit mailboxes, we got our answer.

As you’ll see in our page one story this week, WSF has now acknowledged that without new ferries joining the fleet, there is no path back to consistent service on the routes that have lost boats. The soonest that the new ferries will begin to arrive is 2028, WSF said, meaning we’ll have to spend at least the next four years crossing our fingers, hoping the aging vessels currently in WSF’s fleet can hold on a bit longer.

Here at The Beachcomber, our crystal ball — a piece of proprietary news-gathering technology — was clearly a little cloudy. Maybe it’s a reminder to stay in the reporting business and not the prediction business.

But we still hold out hope that creative solutions to our transportation mess will transpire. Enterprising residents in San Juan County have started their own community water taxi, and representatives from the local level (such as King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda) to the state level (such as Rep. Emily Alvarado) have pledged to help us pursue creative solutions, such as expanded water taxi service.

Meanwhile, Gov. Jay Inslee said in a recent media briefing that the state “should do everything humanly possible to restore more reliable service on our boats.”

We have the will — islanders are activated and passionate about this issue. We have the ear of public officials — how could they not recognize the deep economic and public health impacts of WSF’s decisions about our completely ferry-dependent island?

And we should not accept the status quo for the next four years.

Improvement overall is possible if we coalesce on realistic solutions and bring them to legislators and WSF, just as the Islanders for Ferry Action working group has done — and if we invest in services on the island that make us less reliant on the existing ferry system to begin with.

And while no one is happy to hear that full, reliable ferry service is at the very least four or five years away, we now at least have a more realistic appraisal of what we’re up against. The next half-decade will define our resiliency and teamwork as an island community — we must work together to ease some of the pain on our seniors, teenagers, commuting parents, medically vulnerable residents and everyone else who is most harmed by degraded and diminished ferry service.

As always, The Beachcomber will continue covering the challenges and the bright spots, the setbacks and the solutions, and asking WSF, legislators, and ourselves here on the island the question that matters most:

“What are you doing to fix it?”