With money earmarked to build another 144-vehicle state ferry, the process of naming it is getting under way.
And it’s a good bet it will be the Cowlitz, the Sammamish or the Suquamish.
The Washington State Transportation Commission will be choosing the moniker for what will eventually be the fourth vessel in the Olympic Class in the Washington State Ferries fleet.
Funding to build the boat is in the transportation package passed by the Legislature in July.
Negotiations are underway to have the boat constructed by Vigor, the company that has built the other Olympic Class vessels. Two of those are finished and deployed and the third, the Chimacum, is under construction and expected to replace an older vessel on the Seattle-Bremerton route in early 2017.
Ferry officials last week asked commissioners to pick a name for the fourth vessel by March 2016.
Commissioners decided not to start from scratch. Instead they want to consider three names that made the final cut in 2014 along with Chimacum. Those proposed names were Cowlitz, Sammamish and Suquamish.
Supporters of those names will be invited to make their case, again, to commissioners at their meetings Jan. 12 and 13.
The commission also will seek opinions from Ferry Advisory Committee Executive Council.
And members of the Ferry Riders Opinion Group and the Voice of Washington State will have a chance to vote on the three names via an online survey. The two online survey panels are made up of about 50,000 people from across the state.
A final decision is tentatively expected during the commission meeting March 15 or 16 in Olympia.
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