Keystone-Port Townsend run may have foot ferry today
Published 10:43 pm Saturday, November 24, 2007
PORT TOWNSEND — The state ferry service says workers are making progress adjusting a moorage float at the Port Townsend terminal for a passenger-only ferry.
The deputy executive director, Traci Brewer-Rogstad, said there’s a chance the foot-ferry Snohomish could start running today on the run to Keystone, on Whidbey Island.
She said a crew is being trained to operate the 350-passenger Snohomish, which has been out of service since 2003 when it was pulled off the Seattle-Bremerton route.
The Port Townsend-Keystone run has been shut down since Tuesday, when the ferry service decided to take its 80-year-old Steel-Electric Class ferries out of service because of hull corrosion.
Brewer-Rogstad said it probably will be February before a car ferry returns to the route. That would be the Quinault, which now is in a Seattle shipyard.
Ferry system spokeswoman Susan Harris said the passenger-only ferry will try to keep to the same schedule the car ferry had.
While the Port Townsend-Keystone route has been down, there’s been a surge in traffic on the Kingston-Edmonds run. Harris said a third ferry has been running since Wednesday on the Edmonds-Kingston run, which normally has two boats.
