PORT TOWNSEND — Are you still upset about the ferry situation, with one 50-car boat, the leased Steilacoom II, on the Port Townsend-Keystone run rather than the two 65-car Steel Electrics?
Do you fear that the run will become even more congested as the summer tourism season picks up and ferry traffic grows?
And do you think the new ferry reservation system caters to tourists, not local residents who may need to use the ferry on the spur of the moment?
Has nothing gone right since the corroded Steel Electrics were forcibly retired last November?
Do you chafe at the fact there won’t be any relief until two new Island Home-class ferries are built and go into service in 2010?
Your discontent is matched by the U.S. Navy’s.
The weekly Whidbey Examiner newspaper keeps close tabs on the complaints at the Keystone-Coupeville end of the ferry run.
“NAVY CHIEF CRITICIZES FERRY SERVICE” was the Page 1 headline in the Examiner’s May 30 edition.
“In a meeting last week in Coupeville, the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station commanding officer personally told the head of Washington State Ferries that poor service on the Keystone ferry route is having a negative impact on regional transportation for the military,” the newspaper reported.
”’This is already a community issue, as you already know, but I just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss how important it is to us,’ Capt. Gerral David told WSF chief David Moseley in a May 21 meeting at the Island County Courthouse.
“David told Moseley that the Keystone route has become so unreliable, it is becoming increasingly difficult to use the route to transport essential personnel and supplies between Whidbey Island and Navy facilities on the Olympic Peninsula.
“‘Almost exclusively, the 18-wheelers that supply the base go Highway 20 because they can’t either trust the ferries, or afford them,’ David said.”
