Grounding of the ferry Walla Walla is a harbinger of service interruptions to come.

Saturday evening the ferry Walla Walla was enroute from Bremerton to Seattle when it lost power and ran aground on Bainbridge Island. Service on the Bremerton run had already been cut to a single ferry due to policies adopted during the COVID pandemic in 2020. With the Walla Walla stuck on the beach service did not resume until a relief ferry could be brought in the next morning.

The exact cause of the power failure is being investigated, but the underlying problem of insufficient maintenance of an ageing fleet was already well known to the governor and other state leaders. The 2019 Washington State Ferries Long Range Plan says on page 42,”…it is clear that without investment in vessel replacement, a growing risk of service reliability accumulates every year.” In response to that risk, the WSF plan called for adding seven new ferries by 2027, but that smart idea for fleet renewal was delayed by the Governor’s Executive Order 18-01, which directed WSF to “…ensure that the Washington State Ferry System begins the transition to a zero-carbon-emission ferry fleet”.

So, rather than moving ahead to acquire conventionally powered ferries under an existing contract, WSF embarked on a multi-year effort to design hybrid-electric ferries. After four years of design work and extensive negotiations with Vigor Industries WSF officials failed to reach agreement on a contract for the new ferries. With no new ferries, the fleet is stretched thin and there isn’t enough out-of-service time for maintaining a fleet in which the average vessel age is over thirty years. As the WSF plan notes.”…the current fleet size does not include sufficient relief vessels to support a reliable system.”

The fleet maintenance problem is made worse by the Governor’s vaccination mandate, which caused the dismissal or forced the retirement of experienced personnel. WSF is still struggling to hire the qualified personnel needed to operate and maintain the fleet.

A bill in Olympia (HB 1846) would restart the vessel procurement process with the hope of acquiring new and more affordable ferries. Even if everything goes according to plan the first new ferry would not join the fleet until 2027. Until then, the public should expect more ferry breakdowns and unplanned service interruptions.