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Hundreds of Vashon Island residents demand fix to their ferry route

By Ranji Sinha, KIRO 7 News
By Ranji Sinha, KIRO 7 News
Hundreds of residents who travel on the Vashon Island Ferry say they are fed up with the service on the ferry and their ability to even get on the Ferry at peak times.
Many residents showed up to a public meeting about the Vashon Island Ferry at Vashon High School, and many of them said changes made to how service is delivered on their route have made their commute a nightmare -- and they're demanding a fix.
The issues begin in West Seattle -- many ferry commuters that spoke to KIRO 7 say they sometimes can wait along Fauntleroy Way for more than an hour in a line that often stretches more than a mile long.

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After 9 p.m. the line grows short or is non-existent.
Washington State Ferries says changes at the Fauntleroy Dock have allowed them to process more vehicles. Representatives from the agency say jobs being handled by several people were streamlined down. They also added that police and staff were in communication to manage the lines that stretch up Fauntleroy Way during rush hours.
As the meeting at Vashon High School progressed, dozens raised or waved their hands, and even shouted out their concerns and anger to show how they feel about the service.
Statements offered during public statements ranged from politely critical: “You’re left sitting there waiting for the next ferry” to critically sarcastic: “Could they have an ulterior motive for delivering mind-bendingly crappy service?”
Washington State Ferries said more vehicles are being processed onto the ferry at Fauntleroy Dock from 6 to 9 p.m. Monday to Friday prompting one woman to state plainly that people are on-line and taking ferries at those times because they simply couldn’t get home earlier.
The crowd at Vashon High School easily surpassed 200.
Some Vashon residents like Sharon Morris say part of the frustration comes from watching unfilled boats leave on time while commuters wait to get to the dock during a slow crawl of traffic, “You think, 'How long am I going to have to wait here, how many books do I have to read?'”
It’s a sentiment that was echoed by commuter Jesse Page, who says he has seen the ferry service deteriorate over time, especially at Fauntleroy Dock. “The bottleneck is actually preventing… the cars can reach past the 76 gas station, and the dock will be empty and the boats are leaving about a quarter to a half empty.”
Many commuters say the ferry runs late anyway so might as well fill it up with vehicles. Hadley Rodero, the strategic communications manager for Washington State Ferries, attended the meeting and said the triangle route near Vashon Island has limitations that are tough to overcome,. “The ferries, if we hold them in to fill the boat, they start to get later and later… this is an old dock that was built to serve smaller boats (and) now we've got 124-car (capacity) ferries on the route.”
Many commuters say they want an old bypass lane back. It allowed prepaid customers through, but ferry officials say it posed a danger; and the new system they’ve developed gets more vehicles on. Rodero says Washington State Ferries does have plans for the triangle route near Vashon Island including a larger ferry and work on the dock.
Rodero says the goal of the special meeting with commuters is to find solutions to the problems, but people like Sharon Morris say their frustration with the ferry is only growing. “The changes that WSF ferries put in made things worse.”
Washington State Ferries says the Vashon Island Ferry is handling a large number of vehicles. In 2016 the number of vehicles that were Ferried just from the Fauntleroy dock to Vashon Island was over 1.1 million.

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