The flow of bad news on ferry fiascos in British Columbia, Lake Ontario, Washington State and New Zealand seems endless.

From the West Seattle Blog yesterday:

Until a few years ago, Washington State Ferries service was reliable, dependable, fully filling its role as part of the state highway system.

Now, WSF sails in turbulent waters daily – with shortages of boats and workers, cancelling sailings and/or falling behind schedule. On the other side of a 15-minute rain from West Seattle, ferry-dependent Vashon Island is suffering in a big way, since the Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth route has been hit especially hard. It’s long been down to two boats when it’s supposed to have three, and sometimes reduced to one by vessel breakdowns or crew unavailability. Delays happen daily. There’s a shorter route – Point Defiance-Tahlequah – between south Vashon and the Tacoma area, but its one-boat baseline service is not immune to trouble.

This is affecting lives and livelihoods, say island residents – with health, business, educational, and other impacts – and a group has convened to do more than complain and despair. They’ve come up with a list of more than 50 actions that they say could help, and group reps sailed over to West Seattle on Monday to announce their recommendations in the form of a “community report.”

https://westseattleblog.com/2023/11/the-ferry-crisis-hurts-right-now-vashon-island-residents-propose-ways-to-ease-the-pain/

Regular readers will know that these four ferry service providers, operating in gentler climates, charge more, due to smaller state subsidies, have older fleets, serve fewer vulnerable communities and have what seem to be greater reliability issues, than CalMac.

The last point has to remain impressionistic based on media coverage as only CalMac is obliged to maintain and publish daily figures.

How is CalMac doing?

Seasonally 95% on time and 99% on time over the last week.