Philadelphia area ferry service

[drive carephilly]

Originally Posted by Marius Pontmercy

How is the ferry any quicker than the infrastructure in place? You would have to go down the Delaware and up the Schuylkill which is hardly direct. Might I add you've never addressed the ice issue.

you clearly didn't read the OP or look at the map.

get back to me later.

[drive carephilly]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

If it's a "commuter service," by definition, it's "transit."

give me a break. that's semantics. people (including on here) routinely distinguish between commuter services like regional rail and express buses and "transit" services like the 10 trolley or 21 bus.

One runs with short headways for most of the day and takes people relatively short distances.

The other has a few runs inbound during the AM peak, a similar amount of runs outbound during the PM peak and perhaps a few round-trips mid-day. It's designed to get people from the suburbs to the CBD and back out again.

I guess the $64k question here is: Are our road crossings overtaxed enough at peak hours to make this idea viable? The four cities you cite have either or both of these conditions:

--Sizable commuter populations living across large bodies of water not easily bridged (Boston, Seattle)
--Severe peak-hour congestion on the few road crossings that exist and little to no possibility other road crossings will be added (New York, San Francisco)

The first condition absolutely does not obtain here. Does the second?

You're wrong on both counts.

first - We're not going to build a new bridge across the Delaware.

second - when it's taking commuters an hour to travel 13 miles. . . that's the definition of congestion. That's a Level of Service of F. Saying "it's not as bad as the Bay Area" is little consolation to the hundreds of thousands people who have never been there and are sitting in Philadelphia traffic.

By your logic there's no need to build another rail line or extension of one . . . yet these are already planned with the express purpose of "providing alternatives to sitting in traffic".

If you understand transportation at all then you understand the reasons why car-owning suburbanites opt to take regional rail trains into Center City (here or in any other city). Those reasons don't all of the sudden change when you introduce a faster, more comfortable mode that gets you closer to your office.

as you correctly pointed out, ferries come far cheaper than rail lines and only need their passengers to count in the hundreds per day to be commercially viable. rail passengers need to count in the tens of thousands to be considered worthy of subsidy.

[drive carephilly]

Originally Posted by kidphilly

I think the concept is interesting and even on the schukyll but am not sure there is demand. To me there would need to be many connections and then connections to other rapid forms and work with Septa and PATCO NJT etc for fare cards not to mention they need more than 3 boats

I never said 3 boats.

I said 3 or 4 routes and 12 boats.

I agree that a combined fare card would be useful and a boost to ridership but I don't think it's critical.

Stopping across the street from 30th St. Station is about as connected as it gets.

So stops at Market, South, Greys Ferry, Art Museum (Water works)

See, this isn't a bus on water. It's not meant to circulate people inside the city. It's meant to move people from South Jersey (where transit options are limited) into Center City. Think of it more like the Great Valley Flyer. It picks people up in the suburbs and it drops them off at a central location.

Intermediate stops deliver few to zero additional passengers, add expenses in maintaining extra facilities, and add to the length of the trip - which then adds to operating costs and inconveniences most of your ridership.

Stopping at South St. & Market St. make good sense. Grays Ferry & Water Works aren't going to produce enough riders to make the time worth it. Hardly anyone lives within a short walk of where those ferry landings would be and even fewer people work within that walking distance.

[Marius Pontmercy]

Originally Posted by drive carephilly

you clearly didn't read the OP or look at the map.

get back to me later.

What, so its seasonal?

[drive carephilly]

Originally Posted by Marius Pontmercy

How is the ferry any quicker than the infrastructure in place? You would have to go down the Delaware and up the Schuylkill which is hardly direct.

at no point did I ever suggest or map out a route that goes down the Delaware River then up the Schuylkill River. Early on in this thread I suggested that such a route would be silly as it would take 25-30 minutes.
The only routes that I suggested go up the Schuylkill River are from points well south of the Walt Whitman Bridge.

Might I add you've never addressed the ice issue.

The Delaware gets ice sometimes. But then so do New York & Boston. The key word here is "sometimes". It's incredibly rare that the river gets so much ice south of the Ben Franklin that it isn't passable. This isn't Montreal where the St. Lawrence freezes solid for months. If we get ice it's for a few days or a week and it's done.

So to answer your question, yes, sometimes ferry service has to shut down for a few days and people have to find alternate routes but most of the time the ice isn't a threat and the trip just takes 10 minutes longer because the boat can't go as fast. Compare this to "slippery rail season" or the other service disruptions SEPTA experiences or other acts of nature like this: Washed-out bridge to affect SEPTA's R5 line - Philly.com