Ferry contingency plan: A good thing done wrong

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Vashon Islanders are resilient. We plan ahead, build redundancy into our lives, and show patience when systems strain. But Washington State Ferries (WSF) is asking us to deal with a lot more than crew shortages, aging ferries, and bad weather.

The ferry system’s backup plan — the WSF Service Contingency Plan — actually makes things worse instead of helping us in a time of need.

Islanders for Ferry Action (IFA) asks you to join us in calling on the governor and WSF to fix this situation.

Few ferry riders have heard of the Service Contingency Plan, but it affects our lives in a big way. So, let’s unpack it here. If a boat anywhere in the system fails for more than 24 hours, WSF’s backup plan sends a replacement boat.

The plan takes that boat from our Triangle Route. That’s right. Only our Triangle Route provides the first-call relief boat. No other route is asked to share the load.

The Triangle Route is not a marginal line in the WSF system. It is the fourth-largest route by ridership, and Vashon riders account for roughly three-quarters of Triangle Route users. Unlike most WSF routes, it serves multiple destinations and includes our ferry-dependent community.

In Vashon’s case, we have no road alternative. The Triangle Route should not be the system’s only pressure relief valve when ferries or crews are short elsewhere. Yet that’s exactly what is happening.

Despite a declared “return to full service,” the Triangle Route was placed on an emergency two-boat schedule six out of 15 weeks during fall 2025. That’s nearly 40% of the time. Planned maintenance outages in 2026 will increase that percentage. On top of that, we are suffering increasing disruption and overloads on the south-end run.

The governor promised 100% service restoration, but the Triangle Route is getting only 60% service, largely because of the unfair backup plan that reverts to the deeply flawed two-boat schedule.

We all have experienced this disruptive reality, and IFA has pushed on the problem. But WSF now says revising the two-boat schedule is “out of scope,” after they wasted $169,000 of legislature-appropriated taxpayer money in 2025 to produce an almost exact copy of the old, flawed schedule.

WSF’s refusal to address the situation now leaves us with the same broken schedule and a backup plan that makes things worse, not better.

New vessels are years away. Maintenance needs will increase, not decrease. Treating the Triangle Route as a permanent relief valve is not sustainable, and it’s not equitable.

Islanders for Ferry Action will say this as many times as we need to until we’re heard: ferry access is not a convenience for islanders — it is our only highway.

Missed sailings cascade into missed medical appointments, lost work hours, canceled deliveries, and shuttered small businesses. WSF should adopt a rotating, system wide relief strategy so no single route or community absorbs a disproportionate share of ferry service disruption.

Vashon is not asking for special treatment. We are asking for equitable treatment grounded in real-world use, real-world impact and real accountability.

We are asking for our ambulances to have a reliable way to and from hospitals. For our elementary school students to have a reliable route to and from school. For our essential workers to have a way here or home again.

Please call and write the governor, our legislators, and WSF. Ask for two things:

Open up the contingency plan rewrite that’s currently underway. Do it in public and take citizen comments. Ask them to make a plan that shares the load instead of making the Triangle Route give up a boat every single time there’s a boat down.

Include the flawed two-boat schedule in the rewrite. For the foreseeable future, more boats will be down for repairs. That means more, not fewer, days on the flawed two-boat schedule. Triangle Route riders should not have to live with that bad schedule.

This moment is an opportunity. With honest data and genuine collaboration, WSF can restore trust and build a contingency plan and two-boat backup schedule that works for everyone—including the islanders who rely on it every single day.

To find out more, visit thisisvashon.com/islandersforferryaction.