In cash-strapped industry, Sound ferry stays afloat
Public transportation is a money-losing proposition. But Connecticut is home to one of the few profitable transit companies in the U.S.
It’s not CTtransit or Metro-North, both of which are heavily subsidized. No, the operation that’s squarely in the black is the BridgeportPort Jefferson Steamboat Co., a.k.a. “the ferry.”
“If you tried to start this ferry company today, you couldn’t do it,” the ferry company’s Chief Operating Officer Fred Hall said. Today’s ferry is a legacy of the
1883 cross-Sound service run by P.T. Barnum.
Hall has been on the boats since 1976 when he worked weekends as a bartender as a “side-hustle” to his advertising job in New York City. In those days, they ran a Friday and Saturday night “Rock the Sound” cruise departing at
10 p.m. from Port Jefferson, N.Y. Complete with a live rock band and a lot of drinking (the legal age then was 18), the three-hour cruise drew 600 passengers a night.
Hall was then promoted to general manager of the Bridgeport terminal, assistant general manager and finally to vice president in charge of the entire operation. He thoroughly enjoys his work, commuting from his home on Long Island to inspect the three-vessel fleet several times a week.
He’s not alone: the ferry carries nearly 100 daily walk-on commuters, crossing in both directions, who are an important indicator of the economy’s strength to Hall.
“When the numbers of monthly commuter (at $240 per month) are high, that’s a sign of a weakening jobs market because people have to commute long distances to find work,” he observes.
But the opposite is true for the amount of cars carried on the ferry.
“In 2005, we carried
460,000 cars,” he said. “In
2018, only 450,000.” Why? Hall says many of his repeat customers are using the ferry to get to second homes — beach houses on Long Island or winter ski cabins in New England.
“You can probably fly out west in the winter and get more reliable snow conditions and still save money compared to driving to Vermont,” Hall says of his northbound Long Island customers.
Big changes are coming for the Bridgeport ferry, starting with an annual May fare increase. Tickets, previously sold on board “using carnival tickets on a broom handle,” are now e-tickets sold and scanned before boarding. If you’re bringing a car, reservations are needed, especially on weekends. If you show up without a ticket, expect to pay a surcharge, just like on Metro-North.
The ferry company is still seeking to move to a new, larger terminal farther east in the harbor, a 19-acre site that will also support a deep-water shipping pier — if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredges the harbor.
But that work is a
Catch-22, Hall says. “They dredge where there’s shipping traffic. But that traffic depends on dredging.”
The new, $35 million ferry terminal will save up to eight minutes unloading and loading the ship and allow passengers to board using Jetways.
The terminal could open as soon as in 2020 or 2021. The ferry company also hopes to add a fourth boat to its fleet, built in the U.S. and likely to cost between
$30 million and $40 million. But long rumored plans to run additional ferry service from New Haven to Port Jefferson likely won’t happen, Hall said. He said the company “couldn’t find the land” for a New Haven terminal.