Not looking good for Hornblower’s NYC Ferry Service

Looks like another NYC Ferry on the Rockaway Route grounded.

BREEZY POINT, Queens — More than two dozen passengers are stuck aboard a ferry that ran aground in the area of Coney Island Channel and Jamaica Bay near Breezy Point, Queens Wednesday evening.

Police and firefighters were called around 6 p.m. Wednesday to the boat, stuck between Brooklyn and the Rockaway peninsula in Queens.

Officials say 27 people were stranded on the NYC ferry for hours before being transported to a heated boat. They were safely transported to Brooklyn Army Terminal.

No injuries have been reported.

Firefighters said the ferry owners originally were arranging to have it towed, but an evacuation was getting underway around 7:30 p.m.

A city-sponsored, privately run ferry runs to the Rockaways from lower Manhattan. It’s part of a $335 million effort to ease strains on New York’s public transportation system.

As of 7 p.m., bitterly cold temperatures plummeted to 22 degrees, feeling like 12 degrees.

Last month, more than 100 passengers were rescued from a ferry that ran aground off lower Manhattan.

It was fun to listen to this on 13 for several hours last night.

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At least it’s all sandbars over there, the real fun starts when the service is extended into the rock field that is Eastern LI sound.

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Getting off-topic but this service should have never existed in the first place. Subways already run most of this route. It’s a testament to the incompetence of the MTA and the apathy of the political class to making transit work that taxpayers have been saddled with paying for transit services twice- which a well-off minority is happy to do to get their discounted boat rides and a vast majority is getting ripped off by.

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Really? Are you the New York Post editor that has it out for this ferry service? By all accounts, it seems popular and even on the verge of being over utilized. I have to admit that the $2.75 fare seems ridiculously low. But that is also a low fare for subsidized subway service.

Maybe the MTA should shut down the subway and increase ferry service to eliminate the redundancy you speak of? What about the roads that also run the same routes as the subway? Are those redundant?

I think that every great city on a vibrant waterway has a duty to consider how to use that waterway effectively, both for commerce and transit.

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And there were probably the same arguments being floated in the 1800’s when the government was subsidizing the subway construction.

A: the ferries are a visual “success” but the entire fleet carries less than a single bus route (not even the highest ridership route) at a much higher per-rider subsidy. The implication is improve the horrible buses and subways citywide, not build duplicative transit
B: This particular route parallels a specific existing subway route. It isn’t even more direct, the total route miles are almost the same. Again, I am objecting to the taxpayer subsidized ride, not ferries in general. I support taxpayer subsidies where there are no other options like the Staten Island Ferry, which despite having no fare has a lower per-rider subsidy because ridership is high, because there are no direct alternatives.
c: the original subways were in fact privately funded by two competing companies, but they got city concessions to build and in exchange were mandated to have a 5¢ fare for decades, allowing inflation to bankrupt the companies. Sort of the inverse is what’s happening with ferries now.
D: yes urban highways should be torn down everywhere