Push for More Ferryboats Sets Sail in S.F.

Around this city known for its bridges, some folks want to return to a time when San Francisco Bay teemed with ferries shuttling passengers back and forth.

This back-to-the-future plan was launched formally in February as a way to ease bridge gridlock brought on by the earlier fleet’s demise.

A water transit task force appointed by the state Senate in 1997 issued what amounts to a wish list in its preliminary report on the plan.

“How to do it and pay for it is another matter,” said Russ Hancock of the Bay Area Council, which joined the Bay Area Economic Forum to produce the document. Those matters are expected to be dealt with when the final report is issued, probably in April, he said.

The plan foresees at least 26 terminals served by 70 vessels at an initial estimated cost of $680 million.

“The ferries will have to link up with other public transit systems,” Hancock said.

For a reminder, one needs only to look at the century-old Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street. Streetcars once circled in front of the building as passengers disembarked from the nation’s largest ferry fleet.

As many as 50 million passengers and 7 million motor vehicles rode the ferries each year during the 1920s and ‘30s. Today, there are fewer than 3 million passenger trips per year.

Southern Pacific operated the largest system in 1930. Its fleet consisted of 27 automobile-carrying ferries on seven routes. In all, 47 ferryboats sailed the bay in that year.

So many ferries jammed the bay that when the fog was thick, the boats ran at 40-minute intervals rather than the usual 20 minutes to minimize the risk of collision.

Although the big, traditional ferryboat disappeared from bay routes in 1958, it’s still possible to board one. The 300-foot Eureka is open to the public at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. Built in 1890, the 300-foot vessel remained in service until 1957.

New ferries, of course, wouldn’t look like the Eureka. They would be more in the class of the M.V. Del Norte, a high-speed craft that can carry 325 passengers on the run it makes between San Francisco and Larkspur, 12 miles to the northwest.

The 135-foot Del Norte is the fifth ferry in the Golden Gate Transit District’s flotilla.

Other ferry routes include Alameda-San Francisco, Oakland-San Francisco and Vallejo-San Francisco. Proposed routes would range from Antioch, about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco, to Sunnyvale, 35 miles southeast.

Redwood City on the San Francisco Peninsula is typical of the towns that would like to join the ports of call.

Redwood City Port Commissioner Dick Dodge said a survey of 10 of the city’s largest employers with close access to the port found that 1,873 workers live within four miles of the Ferry Building in San Francisco. In addition, 291 live within a five-mile radius of Jack London Square in Oakland.

There can be little doubt that there are people willing to be passengers.

Ferry ridership swelled during the 1997 Bay Area Rapid Transit district strike. Long after the walkout ended, the ferries reported a 20% gain over pre-strike levels.

High-speed ferries would permit a Redwood City-San Francisco commute in 50 to 55 minutes, Dodge said.

The big lure, however, may not be convenience.

A soothing commute on a ferryboat could turn San Francisco’s work force into an “uncritical mass,” as author Nancy Olmsted jokingly put it in her book, “The Ferry Building: Witness to a Century of Change, 1898-1998.”

What a great way to start and end the workday, she said, praising “the calming effect of moving slowly across San Francisco Bay in a convivial atmosphere.”

Olmsted, who rides ferries every chance she gets, isn’t the first writer to see the connection.

Harold Gilliam wrote about growing up in Los Angeles and visiting San Francisco in the 1930s. He was struck by how the people in San Francisco seemed “more courteous.”

Gilliam concluded that there was a connection between the ferries and the genial atmosphere.

“Nearly everyone here seemed more mellow and less pressured, as if he had the key to the gift of the enjoyment of life,” Gilliam wrote. “The boats, I speculated, could be the key to the quality of life here.”