After a brush with calamity over Strawberry Festival weekend, when north end ferry service dwindled that Saturday — the island’s busiest day of the year — we are feeling thankful for a few new scraps of good news.

This includes surging numbers for the King County Water Taxi, which recently expanded service on its Seattle-Vashon route by adding four new midday roundtrips.

Overall ridership is up 195% from this time last year for the county water taxi, Seattle-based TV news station, King 5 reported in late July; for the first nine days of July in 2023, the taxi saw 1,300 riders, and in 2024, it saw 3,800 riders.

The increased ridership, plus news this week from WSF that the third “ghost boat” will expand and continue operating this fall (see page 1 story), is heartening for several reasons.

First: It’s indicative that both islanders and visitors need more transportation options, and are willing to use them. The water taxi won’t work for everyone, but for many islanders, it’s an effective way to get to concerts, sports games, and doctor’s appointments. For many visitors, it’s a less headache-inducing way of visiting friends on the island.

Second: It demonstrates the value of creative, cross-governmental solutions, at least while the island spends the next few years waiting for a reliable three-boat schedule to return to the Triangle route. Expanded water taxi service was a policy goal for new King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda and our local legislators. We’re happy to see that collaboration made it a reality.

Third: It shows that growth is possible. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Puget Sound “mosquito fleet” of private steamboats ferried passengers all across Puget Sound. Though a return to that system is implausible, there is plenty of room open for enterprising vessel owners to dream up new ways of taking people to and from the island. Just look at the San Juan Community Water Taxi.

This news doesn’t take away from the pain of missed sailings on the Triangle route, nor the cliff of challenges that WSF faces in trying to rapidly attract crew and build hybrid-electric boats. It doesn’t heal the sting of being told that three-boat service was months away, only to learn that it would really, likely have to wait for several years as we wait for new hybrid-electric boats to be built.

And it also doesn’t wipe away the decades of disinvestment into our state’s aquatic highways that brought us to this crisis — though if this year’s legislative session and race for Governor is anything to go by, our lawmakers in Olympia may finally be waking up to the problem.

But it is a reminder of what actually works — coordinated, focused advocacy by islanders, politely but insistently pressuring our lawmakers and officials to maintain our highways to the mainland.

That’s something we can all get behind.