PORT TOWNSEND — A regional planning group won’t push a Port Townsend-Edmonds car ferry as its first choice for buffering the effect of a planned Hood Canal Bridge closure, but it won’t take the idea off the table, either.
“I didn’t hear a no,” said Tim Caldwell, Port Townsend Chamber of Commerce general manager, after he addressed the Peninsula Regional Transportation Planning Organization, commonly referred to as PRTPO, at its meeting in Shelton on Friday.
Caldwell asked the group, which reports to the state Department of Transportation, to advocate changing the 2009 Hood Canal Bridge closure plan to include a Edmonds-Port Townsend auto ferry or — as his second choice — a Port Ludlow-Kingston passenger-only ferry.
“I asked them to make the auto ferry their number one priority, and make the Hood Canal passenger ferry a secondary option,” Caldwell said after the meeting.
Jefferson County Commissioner David Sullivan and Port of Port Townsend Commissioner Herb Beck, both members of the association, supported Caldwell’s plan.
Sullivan moved that the organization make the auto ferry from Edmonds to Port Townsend a primary option in the mitigation, and Beck seconded it.
A 6-5 vote killed the motion.
The association of cities, towns, counties, ports, tribes, transit agencies and major employers considers growth management, economic and transportation issues in Clallam, Jefferson, Kitsap and Mason counties.
The Hood Canal Bridge will be closed for six weeks in May and July 2009 while the eastern half of the bridge is replaced.
The plan now is for a passenger-only ferry operate for six weeks between South Point, south of the bridge in Jefferson County, and Lofall on the Kitsap Peninsula.
Caldwell has long argued that the passenger-only ferry would do little to mitigate the impact the North Olympic Peninsula will experience during the closure, and would be a waste of resources.
