Ferry service on Lake Union starts in July

by Brier Dudley Seattle Times staff reporter For the first time in 50 years, Seattle will have year-round Lake Union ferry service, starting in July.

Seattle Ferry Service yesterday received state permission to operate a 49-passenger boat from Fremont to South Lake Union.

The private service debuts Saturday at the Wooden Boat Festival on the lake and runs through July 4. Permanent service will start later in July, owner Larry Kezner said.

His boat, the Fremont Avenue, will make hourly trips from beneath the Aurora Bridge in Fremont to the Naval Reserve center on the southern shore of the lake that is being converted into a city park. The run will be 20 minutes each way and will cost $7 round trip.

Also approved to run Lake Union ferries was Argosy Cruises of Seattle, the state's largest tour-boat company.

Argosy had challenged Kezner's plans, but the companies have agreed to run separate routes. That plan was approved yesterday by the state Utilities and Transportation Commission.

Argosy received permission to run from South Lake Union to the University of Washington. That could extend a ferry route the company hopes to operate from Kirkland to the UW.

The university wanted a further connection to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in South Lake Union, Argosy owner John Blackman said. But he said Argosy probably won't regularly operate lake ferries unless the state subsidizes the Kirkland service.

-- (zowie@hotmail.com), June 29, 2000

Answers

Why should they, as long as they can sucker everybody else into paying for them?

-- Mark Stilson (mark842@hotmail.com), June 30, 2000.

With audit and accountability problems that the ferry system has, it is outrageous that the establishment lay cutbacks on ferry service at the feet of tax cut initiative passing. This seems like a selective memory. From an ethical point of view, the ferry system and elected officials are shameless in trying to single out tax cutters as villians in the overall scheme of things, and in trying to pit the ferry riders against the tax cutters. Don't let them get away with it while they have egg on their faces. The entire ferry special interest can be nuked/neutralized if Washintonians would be bold enough to put in bridge-tunnel-causeway systems like Hampton Roads/Chesapeake Bay, Florida Keys, and San Francisco Bay areas and so forth have. Don't hold out for Utopia. Can you envision the aforemetioned areas without the discussed thoroughfares. Reality check time! Any student of history knows the dismal failures of Utopia Societies. Let us not be naive diehards, lest we deserve being held in check by our adversaries and the opposition. Quit playing catchup. Leadership means practical solutions. Let us not be timid and get out in front of issues with view toward the distant horizon. No more holding action. Be strategic and flank the opposition. We need strategically placed across water (on-over-under) roadways throghout the region, including between Seattle-Edmonds-Whitbey Island and the Olympic Peninsula. Ferrys are a modern anachronism/obsolete. Neuter these priviledged prima donas. Redeploy the ferry workers as toll takers and overwater thoroughfare maintenance crews. Yours truly, Richiedotcom.......

-- Richard Lanzner (rdotcom@elsitio.com), July 07, 2000.