Posted in transit, tagged ferry, WTA on August 21, 2014| 2 Comments »
The Oakland-SSF ferry is still struggling to find passengers. Farebox recovery is far below the 40% threshold required by the MTC to continue operation:
The service requires a $39 per trip subsidy for each of the ~327 daily riders. That result is not at all surprising when you consider that BART and the toll bridges provide much faster service. Nonetheless, San Mateo TA plans to spend $30 million on this white elephant.
Posted in transit, tagged ferry on March 18, 2013| 5 Comments »
Here is some shock news. After nine months in service, still nobody is riding the Oakland-SSF ferry service:
The much-heralded ferry service between Oakland and South San Francisco – launched just nine months ago at a cost to taxpayers of more than $42 million – is taking on water fast.
The service, which operates seven trips each weekday, carried an average of just 131 total riders a day in the last week of February. That’s less than a third of what officials were counting on during the ferries’ first year on the bay. The service operates with a $2.3 million annual subsidy from bridge tolls, but in its first seven months, it took in a mere $145,300 in fares.
The South San Francisco line was never expected to be a moneymaker, or even to break even. Even with the ferry authority’s optimistic projections of 100,000 riders a year, the line would still need to be publicly subsidized to the tune of $47 a ride. But given the current ridership, the public cost of a single ride comes in at more than $100.
The South SF ferry terminal is in the middle of fucking nowhere. And there is already frequent BART train service between Oakland and SSF (not to mention two toll bridges). There is no way this ferry service will ever be useful.
