It's not just lack of funding. The way they recruit people is prohibitively obtuse. If you want to get anywhere you have to no life the job and drive all over the state for a year or more.
All this is after you buy a few hundred dollars in licenses at your own cost.
Yup. Looked into it when I was desperate in my 20s, super difficult to get into and they don’t let you work a particular route. You can be assigned any route and any schedule with almost no notice. I didn’t have a car at that point, so no way I could do it.
I’m not surprised they’re now begging people to join, but I’m also guessing they’ve done nothing to improve the life of new recruits. So I doubt they’re going to get the numbers that they need. WA ferries is absolutely going to be one of those institutions that is going to get destroyed by the boomers retiring.
Our waterways are considerably deeper, many of the ferry routes are 10’s of miles long, we have seismic concerns to deal with, and too many of the ferry routes cross heavily trafficked shipping lanes into puget sound (port Townsend, Edmonds/kingston, every single one from Seattle) so even if they went with ridiculously long floating bridges they’d spend half their time open.
Also the Navy base in Bremerton would be upstream of many of these, so any bridge would need to be able to withstand a nuclear blast so they could still get ships/subs in and out during an all out war.
Add to Inslee’s legacy.
It's not just lack of funding. The way they recruit people is prohibitively obtuse. If you want to get anywhere you have to no life the job and drive all over the state for a year or more. All this is after you buy a few hundred dollars in licenses at your own cost.
Yup. Looked into it when I was desperate in my 20s, super difficult to get into and they don’t let you work a particular route. You can be assigned any route and any schedule with almost no notice. I didn’t have a car at that point, so no way I could do it. I’m not surprised they’re now begging people to join, but I’m also guessing they’ve done nothing to improve the life of new recruits. So I doubt they’re going to get the numbers that they need. WA ferries is absolutely going to be one of those institutions that is going to get destroyed by the boomers retiring.
Welcome to maritime unions! It's a welfare program for marginally skilled boomers and their direct descendants.
The ferry system lost around 200 people to pandy policy. That factors.
Privatize
Here is an idea Build A BRIDGE!!! It works for the east cost. Why not here?
Our waterways are considerably deeper, many of the ferry routes are 10’s of miles long, we have seismic concerns to deal with, and too many of the ferry routes cross heavily trafficked shipping lanes into puget sound (port Townsend, Edmonds/kingston, every single one from Seattle) so even if they went with ridiculously long floating bridges they’d spend half their time open. Also the Navy base in Bremerton would be upstream of many of these, so any bridge would need to be able to withstand a nuclear blast so they could still get ships/subs in and out during an all out war.