Editorial: Getting around, on wheels or water, not any easier

By The Herald Editorial Board

During a 60-day legislative session in 2022, Washington state lawmakers adopted a landmark 16-year transportation package that outlined nearly $17 billion in spending on road projects, bridge maintenance, transit expansion, fish culvert replacement, state ferry funding and more.

Work to implement that plan — Move Ahead Washington — continues, but two years later, the path to what was promised looks longer and more expensive.

Construction costs have increased for road and bridge construction and replacement of culverts to satisfy a federal court mandate to restore fish passage; the state has had to expand its search for shipbuilders to add new ferries and convert older ones to hybrid-electric to its aging fleet; and the state ferry system, itself, is short on labor.

Standing at the dock: The state ferry system offers a case study of the complications frustrating those using the range of the states’ transportation modes.

For Washington State Ferries, the difficulty in signing ferry construction contracts with shipyards, delays in repairs and the loss of employees to retirement and the pandemic have resulted in frustrating cancellations of sailings and the reduction of service for at least three heavily used routes from two ferries to one.

For one ferry rider, profiled in December by The Herald’s Ashley Nash, the cancellations and delays made living on Whidbey Island and getting to her job in Everett on schedule impossible. Last February, the woman, one of about six million annual passengers on the ferry system’s Mukilteo-Clinton and Edmonds-Kingston routes, quit her job at Providence hospital.

Four years ago, Nash’s reporting found, the state ferry system missed 913 scheduling sailings. In 2022, the figure was 2,775. And it’s not expected to improve any time soon. A Seattle Times report earlier this month said that the ferry system had reduced its goal to meet 99 percent of its trips to 95 percent, and pushed back expectations to return to two-boat service for the Port Townsend-Coupeville and Southworth-Vashon routes from sometime this year to an unspecified date, while Edmonds-Kingston customers can at best expect intermittent delays or canceled sailings.

The state ferry system’s fleet of 21 vessels is currently operating with 15 ferries; with crews depleted by about 10 percent. As of last fall, the ferry system’s licensed deck staff of 178 captains and mates was short 22 of a 200-person target; its licensed engineers were short 18 of a target of 200; and its deck staff was short 34 workers of a target of 546.

Full speed ahead, but when? Confronting myriad contributing factors, a range of solutions has been proposed.

Last year, state lawmakers made a significant change in contract philosophy, scrapping its “Build in Washington” model because it couldn’t come to terms with a state shipyard. Bids for ferry construction will now go out nationwide, although considerations still can be made for Washington state shipbuilders.

But work is progressing on the first conversions of ferries to electric-hybrid propulsion, with two ferries scheduled for return to the Seattle-Bainbridge route, one later this year and one in 2025; one for the Edmonds-Kingston run in 2026; and two new ferries following the Mukilteo-Clinton route in 2027 and 2028.

Lawmakers this session also are considering options to rebuild the system’s crews.

One proposal, House Bill 1878, sponsored by Rep. Sam Low, R-Lake Stevens, would correct a rule that is keeping former ferry system engineers from returning to the system with the seniority and pay they had when they left. Beyond ferry engineers, the bill would make the same seniority guarantee for all former state employees.

Some basic fairness, Low said in an interview last month, could encourage former employees to return, whether they retired early, went to school or left to raise young children. Considering that it can take two to three years to train and license workers for ferry crews, Low said, more effort is needed to bring back those already licensed for the work.

Another bill, HB 1904, eyes some of the windfall in carbon emission payments the state received in its first year of auctions under the Climate Commitment Act. The legislation would earmark some of the revenue to further support the retrofit and construction of new electric ferries and the charging infrastructure at ferry landings.

Sen. Marko Liias, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said he agreed with the logic of using some of the additional revenue from the auctions, adding that he’s talked to Sen. June Robinson, D-Everett, now chair of the Senate budget-writing committee, about the full schedule of ferry retrofits and construction.

Still, that leaves more immediate delays to be addressed, and Liias said there has been talk of looking at adding passenger-only service, in particular in the San Juan Islands, when a vehicle ferry is out of service.

Additionally, Rep. Greg Nance, D-Bainbridge Island, in a commentary in the Kitsap Sun, last month outlined other suggestions to rebuild the ferry system’s crews, including easing the hiring of discharged veterans, in particular from Navy bases at Everett, Kitsap and Whidbey Island; and expanding training facilities at maritime academies throughout the Puget Sound region.

Paying for what we want: Of course, little of this — for ferries or for the broader transportation needs for roads, bridges, transit and more — will come without additional cost.

For projects such as improvements to I-405, motorists can expect increases for its toll lanes. The state Transportation Commission is expected to issue new toll rates later this month. Toll lanes also may be seen as part of the funding for the U.S. 2 trestle’s construction in coming years.

But state officials and residents also will need to confront necessary changes in revenue for the state’s transportation needs. It’s more than clear that the state’s reliance on a tax on each gallon of gas and diesel is no longer providing what the state needs to build and maintain its transportation infrastructure. With more fuel-efficient vehicles, changes in driving habits and a increasing number of hybrid and electric vehicles on the road and the goal to phase out new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 the gas tax is less able to support the state’s needs. In little more than a decade fewer and fewer state drivers will be paying a gas tax.

Some have suggested dedicating the sales tax on vehicle purchases to transportation spending, but that would come at a cost to the programs that depend on that revenue going to the state’s general fund.

The ruckus over RUC: What the state has explored for more than a decade is a shift from the gas tax to collecting a road-usage charge, or RUC, a fee that is collected for each mile driven by a vehicle.

Legislation last year, HB 1832, suggested a modest start with a voluntary program that would charge a fee of 2.5 cents per mile for use of all public roadways in the state. Those who participate in the program would have the state’s $225 in registration fees for EVs and plug-in hybrids waived. The bill was reintroduced this year.

A road-usage charge, compared to the relative ease of the gas tax collected at the pump, will be more complicated to collect, whether users are trusted to accurately report their mileage or a device is used to tally and report that mileage. Both systems were tested during a pilot program run by the Transportation Commission.

There’s been considerable push-back against the road-usage charge. While reintroduced, few lawmakers are embracing the proposal this session, even the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jake Fey, D-Tacoma. Fey told the Washington State Standard in October that he intended to identify the problems and concerns people had with a road-usage charge but would not push for passage during a short session.

Still, it’s difficult to see many other alternatives, especially as the gas tax — now the third-highest in the U.S. at 49 cents a gallon — runs out of gas.