PORT TOWNSEND – Washington State Ferries officials seriously considered using Puget Sound Express service for passenger ferry service between Port Townsend and Keystone on Whidbey Island, but decided recently that the numbers just don’t add up.
Puget Sound Express owner Pete Hanke said he is willing and able to take over passenger ferry service from the state’s MV Snohomish which, since it took over the route on Nov. 25, has carried 33 passengers on its busiest run.
“Olympas is ready to go. It’s at the dock. We can do it,” Hanke said Wednesday, recapping a recent conversation with Traci Brewer Rogstad, Washington State Ferries deputy executive director.
Hanke, who operated a passenger ferry route to the San Juans for state ferries during a 1999 emergency, said the Olympas could easily accommodate 35 passengers, launch from its dock at Hudson Point and land at a loading dock just before the Keystone ferry landing on Whidbey Island.
Brewer Rogstad on Wednesday said that Hanke’s operation was a serious contender for the run initially because ferries officials were uncertain that the Snohomish could be brought out of its four-year retirement.
But recent findings show that the cost of running any passenger ferry service between Port Townsend and Keystone Harbor on Whidbey Island is between $8,000 and $10,000 a day.
“Quite frankly, it’s not any more cost effective,” to move to a private ferry, she said.
“It’s probably just better to stay with what we have now.”
Brewer Rogstad said existing Washington State Ferries car-boat personnel were contracted and trained to operate the Snohomish.
Brewer Rogstad added, however, that she and Hanke agreed to continue talks for such needs in the future.
State Secretary of Transportation Paula J. Hammond ordered the four Steel Electric vehicle ferries that served Port Townsend and San Juan Island out of service on Nov. 20.
Citing serious safety concerns, she said excessive corrosion was discovered along the interior keel of one of the 80-year-old ferries, the Quinault.
Ferries officials have been considering whether a private passenger ferry contractor would be more cost-effective than the Snohomish, which has carried only a fraction of its passenger capacity since it was first launched out of the Port Townsend ferry terminal.
The Snohomish, Brewer Rogstad said, now is running at a lower speed, and is using less than the 200 gallons per hour that it was using on the Bremerton route at higher speed.
Hanke uses the Olympas in the spring, summer and fall to take whale and wildlife watchers on day trips to south of the San Juan Islands.
He said, however, that it could easily be used for passenger ferry service from its Hudson Point moorage to the loading dock at Keystone Harbor, which leads to parking there.
Hanke said there is plenty of parking for motorists on each side of the Admiralty Inlet run.
