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| Re: Staten Island Railway (489955) | |||
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Re: Staten Island Railway |
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Posted by WillD on Fri Sep 14 01:17:46 2007, in response to Re: Staten Island Railway, posted by (SIR) North Shore Line on Thu Sep 13 22:00:04 2007. -The boats are too big...The Barberi-class seems to be the staple of this..as if you ever happen to ride the Newhouse/Barberi during the middle of the rush hour, you'll probably notice that's there's probably a 1000 seats left empty. ... We have these giant boats coming in every 15, 20, 30, and 60 minutes and only half of the boat gets filled, when what we really need is smaller trains traveling back and forth between SI and Manhattan with more frequent headways. Coast Guard certified captains are not cheap to come by. Upper New York Harbor is a very congested waterway and the only thing you'd do by going to a larger fleet of smaller vessels is increase the danger of a collision either between two passenger carrying vessels or between a ferry and a freighter. I can never understand how it's now 102 years later since it began, and the SI Ferry is still running at the same slow speeds..and it's still taking a whole 30 minutes to make a 5 mile journey. Fuel costs LOTS of money. Anything above 20knots with a non-planing hull and you'll be chugging fuel like its going out of style. The Navy may have cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and even a few freighters capable of 30+ knots, but they aren't exactly concerned with fuel economy or the costs accrued due to their apathy thereof. Large fast ferries have been a very hit or miss subject in this hemisphere. They've been relatively successful in Europe, but here the Pacificats, the Alaskan Highway Fast Ferry Program, the Washington State Ferry POFF program, and the Rochester-Toronto ferry have all met their end in the past 5 to 10 years. Still, it'd be interesting to see SIF operate a passenger only fast ferry in a for-profit or at least lower-subsidy operation. I think Washington State Ferries still has two 350 seat 40knot POFFs they haven't managed to unload yet, they might look nice in SIF's Orange and Blue. http://www.evergreenfleet.com/poff.html B&O used to run 7-8 boats simultaneously during the peak of the rush hour with 8-10 headways...what I'm wondering is where did that go wrong? See above. Fuel and personnel costs. |
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