Jim Cameron
Public transportation is a money-losing proposition. But Connecticut is home to one of the few profitable transit companies in the US. It’s not CT Transit or Metro-North, both of which are heavily subsidized. No, the operation that’s squarely in the black is the Bridgeport – Port Jefferson Steamboat Company, a.k.a. “the ferry”.
“If you tried to start this ferry company today, you couldn’t do it,” says the ferry company’s Chief Operating Officer, Fred Hall. Today’s ferry is a legacy of the 1883 cross-Sound service run by PT Barnum.
Hall has been on the boats since 1976 when he worked weekends as a bartender as a “side-hustle” to his advertising job in New York City. In those days they used to run a Friday and Saturday night “Rock the Sound” cruise leaving Port Jefferson at 10 p.m. Complete with a live rock band and a lot of drinking (the legal age then was 18), the three-hour cruise drew 600 passengers a night.
From there, Hall was promoted to General Manager of the Bridgeport terminal, Assistant General Manager and finally to Vice President in charge of the entire operation. And he thoroughly enjoys his work, commuting from his home on Long Island to inspect the three-vessel fleet several times a week.
He’s not alone: the ferry carries almost 100 daily walk-on commuters, crossing in both directions, who are an important indicator of the economy’s strength to Hall. “When the numbers of monthly commuter (at $240 per month) are high, that’s a sign of a weakening jobs market because people have to commute long distances to find work,” he observes.
But for cars carried on the ferry, the opposite is true. “In 2005 we carried 460,000 cars. In 2018, only 450,000.” Why? Because Hall says so many of his repeat customers are using the ferry to get to second homes … beach homes on Long Island or winter ski cabins in New England.
“You can probably fly out West in the winter and get more reliable snow conditions and still save money compared to driving to Vermont,” Hall says of his northbound Long Island customers.
Big changes are coming for the Bridgeport ferry, starting with an annual May fare increase. Tickets, which used to be sold on board “using carnival tickets on a broom handle,” are now e-tickets sold and scanned before boarding. If you’re bringing a car, reservations are a must, especially on weekends. If you show up without a ticket, expect to pay a surcharge, just like on Metro-North.
The ferry company is still working on moving to a new, larger terminal farther east in the harbor, a 19-acre site that will also support a deep-water shipping pier … if the US Army Corps of Engineers dredges the harbor. But that work is a Catch 22, he says, noting, “They dredge where there’s shipping traffic. But that traffic depends on dredging.”
The new $35 million ferry terminal will save up to eight minutes unloading and loading the ship and allow foot passengers to board using Jetways. Depending on permits, this new terminal might open in 2020 – 2021. The ferry company also hopes to add a fourth ferry to its fleet, built in the US and probably costing $30–40 million.
But long rumored plans to run additional ferry service from New Haven to Port Jefferson LI probably won’t happen, says Hall. “We just couldn’t find the land [for a terminal],” in New Haven.
Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media.
About the author: Jim Cameron is founder of The Commuter Action Group, and a member of the Darien RTM. The opinions expressed in this column are only his own. You can reach him at CommuterActionGroup@gmail.com For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, visit www.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com
About the author: Lee White (left), a former resident of Old Lyme, has been writing about restaurants and cooking since 1976. She has been extensively published in the Worcester (Mass.) Magazine, The Day, Norwich Bulletin, and Hartford Courant. She currently writes Nibbles and a cooking column called A La Carte for the Shore Publishing newspapers, and Elan, a quarterly magazine, all of which are now owned by The Day.
