Ferry system managers and state budget writers in Washington took a cold wave over the bow Monday upon opening the bids to construct up to five new hybrid electric ferries.
“I don’t see how you get to five. There’s money for three on a good day,” said state House Transportation Committee Chair Jake Fey, D-Tacoma.
The Washington Legislature previously set aside about $1.3 billion to build new ferries and charging infrastructure over the next six to eight years. New vessels are overdue to stabilize the state’s aging and sometimes unreliable ferry fleet. Simultaneously, the ferry system and the state’s Democratic leadership want to reduce the ferries’ air pollution footprint by switching to battery propulsion as much as possible.
Eastern Shipbuilding Group of Panama City, Florida, submitted the low bid for the state’s desired plug-in hybrid, 160-car vessels, according to a summary of the bids posted by WSF late on Monday. The $251 million price tag for the first ferry in the series was roughly in line with the state engineer’s in-house estimate.
Nichols Brothers Boat Builders on Whidbey Island submitted a competing bid that was considerably higher, even after including a 13% bid credit authorized by the Legislature to incentivize home state construction. Neither bid includes the expensive hybrid electric powertrains for the new ferries, which the state plans to acquire separately.
A third shipbuilder, Philly Shipyard, was expected to submit a bid, but didn’t in the end.
The Nichols Brothers and Eastern Shipbuilding Group bids both include escalator clauses that Fey predicted “will invariably make it (the price) go up.” The escalators allow the shipyards to charge more in case of unpredictable cost increases, such as on steel or from tariffs.
Washington State Ferries said in a mass email to interested parties that it will evaluate the bid documents in greater detail for the next few weeks before awarding a contract. The agency will undoubtedly also consult further with the governor’s office and key legislators about what is affordable.
The most recent date given for delivery of the first new ferry was 2029.
“First things first, I need to understand exactly what we’ve got with the bids,” Gov. Bob Ferguson said Monday after an initial, high-level briefing. Ferguson declined to speculate more before getting additional information.
Fey said he expects to discuss where more money could potentially be found. The veteran legislator said multiple currents in the bid environment drove up costs, including rising raw material prices, tariffs and limited shipyard competition – even though the ferry system’s request for bids was opened to shipyards nationwide.
A Democratic legislator from ferry-served Bainbridge Island, Rep. Greg Nance, said he was struck by how Washington’s procurement was affected by the hollowing out of the nation’s shipbuilding industry. He was pleased there was more than one bidder.
“Given the state of shipbuilding writ large, we knew that we were swimming upstream,” Nance said in an interview Monday. “We need to do more to support shipbuilding. We’ve lost our shipbuilding edge over the past 50 years.”
Cost roughly doubled over past seven years
The 144-car Suquamish was the most recent of the workhorse Olympic-class ferries upon which the new plug-in ferry design is based. The diesel-powered Suquamish was delivered to WSF in 2018 at a cost of about $122 million. Debate about how to proceed with further vessel acquisitions in that size class has stretched from then until now.
During this dickering, the state pivoted to electrification, costs shot up and the reliability of the existing aging fleet went down.
The bid request published by WSF included the high-level design for a plug-in ferry capable of carrying up to 160 cars and 1,500 passengers. Drawings show boats that resemble a slightly elongated version of the diesel-powered Olympic class ferries delivered between 2014 and 2018. However, the new design has just one passenger deck stacked on top of the two auto decks.
The center of the ship’s hold will be packed with racks of water-cooled rechargeable batteries so the ferry can sail fully on electric power most of the time. The engine room will also feature twin diesel generators as a backup source of propulsion power.
Assuming they use green electricity to charge, the new ferries should achieve a large reduction in fuel consumption and an associated reduction in global warming emissions.
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