With Older Ferries Aging Out, New Ones Are on the Drawing Board
Just what sort of Staten Island ferry will carry passengers into the second half of the 21st century? That’s the question now being asked by the designers and engineers of the city’s next generation of vessels.
Before the three new boats can make their first 22-minute voyage in 2019, they will go through an extensive series of design and engineering phases that has already begun. Elliott Bay Design Group, the firm designing the vessels, has completed a preliminary design “investigation” of the ferries, which includes studying passenger preferences, the reliability of current ferries, and an increase in security, among a host of other considerations.
“We’ve looked at ridership demand, and trying to forecast out 20 years down the road how the growth on Staten Island or transportation patterns might change in the area,” John Waterhouse, chief concept engineer at Elliott Bay, told a Community Board 1 committee earlier this month.
The Seattle-based company, which has designed ferries for other transportation systems around the country, including those of Massachusetts, Washington and Alaska, showed an initial concept design for a double-ended vessel that carries 4,500 passengers (slightly fewer than the two Barberi class of vessels being replaced), with what Waterhouse said are “some of the best features of the John F. Kennedy above the main deck and some of the best features of the Barberi [class] for under the main deck.”
The Kennedy and Barberi class of vessels—three boats altogether—will be going out of service. The John F. Kennedy, 50 years old, is past retirement age.
Two other boats, the Andrew J. Barberi and the Samuel I. Newhouse, both 34, are reaching their golden years and also need to be replaced, according to Jim DeSimone, the chief ferry officer for the city’s Department of Transportation.
The usual service life for ferries, DeSimone said, is between 35 and 40 years.
“We’ve been able to keep the Kennedy running,” DeSimone noted. “The hull is in very good shape. We stripped parts off the two sister ships, which were disposed of when the last class of ferry was delivered.”
The new vessels will make the trip between Staten Island’s St. George Terminal and Lower Manhattan’s Whitehall Terminal in the same travel time as the old ones, Waterhouse said.
“If the ferry went twice as fast, it really wouldn’t change the transit time very much because you have 15-minute service right now during the peak commute hours. And you just can’t get out of the other boats’ way [quick] enough.”
The firm has also considered amenities for the vessels, including food service and exterior seating.
“We’d like to think that this new class of vessels will be providing good service for New York City for a long time to come,” Waterhouse said.