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Ferry traffic for holiday weekend starting early

By Joanna Small
By Joanna Small

We are still more than 24 hours from the official start of the holiday weekend and already the lines to board Washington State Ferries are backing up city streets.

Ferry officials are expecting one of the busiest Memorial Day weekends on record.
 
It's cloudy and chilly, and Thursday, but the line to board a Washington State Ferry in Edmonds is long, and most of these people are sitting in it in an attempt to beat the real rush.
 
"On a Friday it gets really bad.  So that's why we do it today," explained Troy Nealey, waiting to board the ferry with his family.

“Well I took off Friday and I’m going to work on Monday to kind of shift the travel time,” said Jerrod Smith, also waiting to board.

Long-time business owner Jay Struthers, who runs a coffee stand along the line, lives for long weekends.
 
"Cars get backed up all the way to the QFC up there, it's like a three-hour wait," he told us.  And the waiting makes people hungry.
 
Ferry officials say this is the new normal.
 
"This weekend alone more than 100,000 people a day will travel on our Washington State Ferries," said Ian Sterling, spokesperson for the Washington State Ferries.
 
And for the ferries the holiday weekend now begins on Thursday and really doesn't end until Tuesday.  Last Memorial Day weekend 435,000 people took a ferry; this year that number is expected to be higher.

Ridership is on the rise, up nearly 3 percent in the last year and the highest in more than a decade.
 
"We do a couple of different things," Sterling said.
 
Ferry officials say they're adding additional sailings and eliminating morning sailings on Monday, ahead of the flood of people planning to return that afternoon.  The early birds we talked to planned for that too.
 
"The Mondays can be pretty bad, too, so sometimes we'll do a Sunday," Troy concluded.
 
A lot of the backup is alleviated in the San Juan Islands due to the reservation system.  WSF is considering implementing that at other terminals -- but not yet

Cox Media Group

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