NY Waterway announced this week that it is cutting three routes in Jersey City and Hoboken. The company said that if it does not receive assistance soon, there will be more cutbacks followed by a possible shutdown next winter. Last week, MTR reported that NY Water Taxi and the Hudson County Improvement Authority have shown interest in taking over some NY Waterway routes. It has also been reported that the company hoped to be taken over by the Port Authority.

Now the focus has turned from buyouts to government support for operations.

With the exception of the Staten Island Ferry, no ferry service receives a public operating subsidy. A recent New York Times editorial, and an opinion piece in the NY Times by NYU’s Lee Sander and Rutgers’ Martin Robins called for public funding to help keep ferry service afloat. The Times also suggested that the city could stop charging the ferry companies a docking fee, which would save them about $1.5 million a year, and start charging fares again on the Staten Island Ferry to recoup some of the outlay there. The Times noted that most mass transit in the region – subways, commuter trains and buses – began as private enterprises that failed and were transformed into government services.

The obvious problem is that these days, currently subsidized modes of mass transit which move far, far more people than ferries are in dire budget straits. The MTA is planning another fare hike and service cuts, and will have to do so perennially until a major financing mechanism is created. NJ Transit also suffers from a big structural operating budget problem and plans to raise fares in 2005. It is possible that big transit rescue packages, which are far from assured -- could include a small element for ferry operation, though the same case could be made for other often-ignored elements of regional transit, like New York’s suburban bus agencies. Fairness issues (such as how the Port Authority would allocate subsidies across ferry routes and the PATH system, if it were directed to step in) and competing priorities may work against an easy answer.

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