Keystone ferry plan dropped

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, May 17, 2007

COUPEVILLE – After six years and $5.5 million in studies, Washington State Ferries has decided not to replace its aging Steel Electric ferries with larger vessels on the Keystone to Port Townsend route.

That means the existing 80-year-old ferries will continue to transport people and cars from Whidbey Island to the Olympic Peninsula – indefinitely.

The ferries eventually will be replaced with ferries capable of carrying no more than 100 cars, but there is currently neither money nor a timeline for building the new vessels, said Michael Anderson, executive director of Washington State Ferries.

The Steel Electric ferries have “80-year-old hulls – and nothing lasts forever,” he said. “Eventually we’re going to have to replace them and if we’re going to replace them, let’s look at what our communities want.”

The state’s four Steel Electric ferries are the oldest ferries in operation on salt water in the U.S. Leaky hulls and an outdated design have led some to label the 64-car vessels as unsafe.

The safety of the boats and the way Washington State Ferries has handled replacing them is at the center of a federal lawsuit filed by J.M. Martinac Shipbuilding Corp. The owner of the Tacoma company has accused state officials of engaging in civil racketeering in how they’ve handled the project.

The Steel Electric ferries are the only boats in the state’s fleet that are small enough and agile enough to navigate the existing terminals at Keystone and Port Townsend, ferry officials say.

But ferry officials know they can’t count on their continued use.

If the Coast Guard decides one of the state’s Steel Electric ferries is unsafe before the boats are replaced, the state will shuffle the remaining Steel Electrics around in order to maintain ferry service at Keystone and Port Townsend, Anderson said.

But if the Coast Guard declares all four boats unsafe at one time, the state will face an “emergency situation,” he said. At that point, ferry officials will consider several options, including “scanning the world” for replacement ferries, he said.

They also will consider switching to passenger-only service between Keystone, south of Coupeville, and Port Townsend, or canceling ferry service on that run altogether.

Ferry executives previously were studying ways to wedge 144-car ferries onto the Keystone route. The state spent millions of dollars conducting studies to figure out how to make that work, including plans to move the Keystone terminal and widen the harbor leading to it.

On Tuesday, Anderson told a ferry committee in Port Townsend that ferry officials are now abandoning those plans in favor of smaller ferries that can use the existing terminals.

Although that is a new direction, Anderson said portions of the studies will be helpful in the next phase of planning.

“The monies that have been spent are not wasted,” he said. “It’s not money that we’re throwing away.”

Part of the reason Washington State Ferries has decided not to build bigger boats for the Keystone route is that residents of both Whidbey Island and Port Townsend didn’t want them.

Coupeville Mayor Nancy Conard said she was glad to hear that ferry service will remain as is on the island.

“This is exactly what we were hoping for,” she said.

The state still is pursuing construction of new 144-car ferries. Ferry officials have been meeting in recent days with representatives of area shipyards, discussing ways of sharing the work.

Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.