Missed doctor appointments, hours-long delays, students unable to get to school and flooded car decks look like continuing as Washington State Ferries delays new electric ferries and bring aging old diesels back into service
A typical WSF ferry – aging, rusty and prone to flooded car decks:
Free car wash?
Professor John Robertson OBA
From KIRO7 in Seattle, 4 days ago, we hear that Washington State Ferries is delaying plans for new electric ferries and bringing 3 older diesel boats back into service.
CalMac has 36 ferries in service with 5 under construction, serving 50 locations and 5.3 million passengers per year.1
Washington State Ferries in the affluent region around Seattle had 21 vessels but now has only 18 and none in construction, serviceable vessels, serving 19 million passengers per year.2
From Kitsapp Daily News March 5th 2025:
Missed doctor appointments. Hours-long delays. Students unable to get to school. Those are just a few of the issues fuelling a bill to expand passenger-only ferries state-wide. The bill would deliver $50 million to put additional boats on the waters of Puget Sound by the end of this year. In 2024, island communities worked with the Legislature and the state Department of Transportation to form the Fix Our Ferries Coalition, which advocates for funding more boats, addressing staffing shortages, and increasing accountability and transparency within
One thought on “Missed doctor appointments, hours-long delays, students unable to get to school and flooded car decks look like continuing as Washington State Ferries delays new electric ferries and bring aging old diesels back into service”
The level of mainstream media ‘interest’ in CalMac ferry services has been ramped up and highly politicised over recent years. However, in sharp distinction to coverage by the highly resourced-constrained TuS, the highly resource-rich BBC Scotland and others in the mainstream media – those supposedly serving Scotland – have singularly failed to investigate and fully report on the true state of these ferry services. This failure is despite pointing out the economic and social importance of the ferries to the communities served.
As best as I can recall (and do correct me if I’ve missed something substantive):
There has been little or no objective analysis of the performance statistics (reliability and punctuality etc.) published regularly by CalMac – whether for individual routes or overall. On the face of it, the framing of selective media reporting of service performance is markedly at variance with CalMac’s published performance statistics – not perfect but far from as ‘bad’ as implied by the selective media reporting. So why is this so – a problem with CalMac’s the performance framework or with the media’s reporting?
There has been no mainstream media investigation to benchmark service performance with UK and international comparators.
There has been no mainstream media investigation to benchmark ferry fares with UK and international comparators.
There has been no mainstream media reporting of the extent of public subsidy of the CalMac services and the community benefits that arise.
There has been no objective benchmarking by the mainstream media of fleet age profiles with UK and international comparators.
There has been little or no mainstream media coverage of the onshore investments in port infrastructure associated with CalMac ferry services and the local economic benefits that accrue.
On building new ferries – including ones delivered over-budget and over-time – whilst of course WHOLLY undesirable, the mainstream media would have us believe that not only are such failings rare in the procurement of capital projects, but uniquely ‘Scottish’ and directly caused by a government minister. The framing studiously avoids context or perspective.
And on the decision taken to procure two large CalMac ferries from Ferguson’s and then to nationalise the yard, the mainstream media studiously avoids any consideration of the economic benefits derived from sustaining employment in the yard and its domestic supply chain. They studiously avoid any reflections on the ‘counterfactual’ – i.e. assessing what would have happened if the ferries had not been procured from Ferguson’s and the latter not nationalised.
And yet, despite the mainstream media seemingly convinced of the endless public interest in ‘ferries,’ no mainstream media organisation ‘serving’ Scotland seems interested in pursuing these rich lines of inquiry for investigative journalism. Perhaps the true findings would hole certain politically motivated agendas below their waterline?
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
The level of mainstream media ‘interest’ in CalMac ferry services has been ramped up and highly politicised over recent years. However, in sharp distinction to coverage by the highly resourced-constrained TuS, the highly resource-rich BBC Scotland and others in the mainstream media – those supposedly serving Scotland – have singularly failed to investigate and fully report on the true state of these ferry services. This failure is despite pointing out the economic and social importance of the ferries to the communities served.
As best as I can recall (and do correct me if I’ve missed something substantive):
And yet, despite the mainstream media seemingly convinced of the endless public interest in ‘ferries,’ no mainstream media organisation ‘serving’ Scotland seems interested in pursuing these rich lines of inquiry for investigative journalism. Perhaps the true findings would hole certain politically motivated agendas below their waterline?
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