Washington taxpayers are paying way too much money to design and build the vessels that will join the state ferry fleet, partly because state officials are in a hurry to get them built and partly because of a long-standing and costly practice of tinkering with boat designs.
Those are the views of state Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-Gig Harbor, a retired U.S. Navy captain and member of the House Transportation Committee, the legislative group that writes the transportation budget and oversees the ferry system.
“They have this culture of designing things in-house,” Seaquist said of Washington State Ferries. By custom-designing its own ferries instead of buying vessels “off the shelf,” the agency drives up the costs, he said.
David Moseley, assistant transportation secretary for ferries, acknowledged that the cost of a 64-car vessel now under construction will be pretty high because the state wants to get that first vessel into service by mid-2010. Construction is on a fast track, 18 months instead of 24.
But he disputes the notion that the ferry system has gone overboard on its designs. Moseley said the design of the 64-car ferry is based mostly on an existing vessel, the Island Home, which is now used on the East Coast.
That 76-vehicle, 1,200-passenger ferry cost $32 million to build and was launched in 2007 by the Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority.
The first ferry of the Washington fleet expansion will cost more than double that: $65.3 million.
It will cost an additional $20 million to outfit the $65 million ferry, for a total cost of $85 million, Seaquist said.
Moseley points out that the design had to be modified, tailored to Puget Sound waters and state ferry terminals. The state is ordering two or three more vessels of the same design. Multiple vessels would give the state some economies of scale, lowering the average cost for each boat by spreading costs over several vessels, Moseley said.
“I’m hopeful that the bids we get on the next round will be much better than that,” he said.
Pierce County has more than a passing interest in the construction and deployment of the 64-car ferries.
For one, the county has lent its own ferry, the Steilacoom II, to the state to fill in on some ferry routes while the new ferries are being built.
Secondly, one of the new 64-car ferries eventually will be assigned to the state’s Point Defiance-Tahlequah run between Tacoma and Vashon Island. It will replace the 48-car Rhododendron, which was built in 1947 and is the oldest vessel in the fleet.
The state ferry system has been in a bind since November 2007. That’s when state Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond ordered all four of the 80-year-old Steel Electric-class ferries pulled out of service because engineers said they were unsafe. Those ferries have since been sold and now are in use in Mexico, Moseley said.
Seaquist said it was a mistake to take all four of those boats out of service at once. The state should have tried to salvage at least one of them so there wouldn’t be so much urgency to fast-track construction of their replacements, he said.
“When they got rid of the Steel ferries, they were stuck needing to replace those boats immediately,” he said. “And they seized on the design of the Island Home ferries from Martha’s Vineyard.”
He and Moseley agreed that fast-track construction is making the boat much more expensive.
“We’re about to buy one of the most expensive ferries in history, and then we’re going to go out and buy two more of them,” Seaquist said. “We’re throwing away taxpayer money here.”
That first 64-car vessel is being built by Todd Pacific Shipyard in Seattle and at three other locations, including Jesse Engineering in the Tacoma Tideflats. The Tacoma company is building the fore and aft modules and will be sending them north by barge to Seattle later this month for assembly.
Todd brought the other shipyards on board because of the fast-track schedule to replace the Steel Electric ferries.
“It was a tight schedule,” Jesse Engineering president Jeff Gellert said. “They had to spread the work around.”
Seaquist said he also is concerned about the design of another vessel, a 144-car ferry that will be used on cross-Puget Sound runs such as the Bremerton-Seattle route.
“They’ve gone through $52 million just to design the ferry, and now we’re paying Todd Shipyards to do more detailed designs,” said Seaquist, whose 26th Legislative District includes Bremerton and Southworth, communities for which the ferry system is a vital element of life.
He said private ferry builders pad their construction bids to cover the risks they are taking by agreeing to build off someone else’s plans, Seaquist said.
“We’ve heard a lot of the criticism in how we manage the design of boats,” said Moseley, who took over the helm of the ferry system only 18 months ago.
Moseley and an executive for Todd Pacific gave a status report on the 64-car ferry construction to lawmakers earlier this month. That included all the design changes that had to be made to the Island Home designs to adapt the vessel to Puget Sound.
Among the changes:
• The shape of the hull was changed to fit Washington ferry terminals.
• The Island Home carries 76 cars and 650 passengers. The new ferry will carry 64 cars and 750 passengers.
• The length of the ship was increased by 19 feet.
• Bicycle holding areas were added and the air conditioning system was eliminated.
• The sizes of the fuel, fresh water and sewage tanks were increased to minimize delays for loading and unloading.
Seaquist said Washington State Ferries made so many changes to the design that the vessel no longer can be considered “off the shelf.” It’s a brand new class of vessel and carries with it additional costs, he said.
Those costs will worsen an already bad budget situation for the ferries, he said.
The Legislature has budgeted $115 million to design and build 64-car ferries during the 2009-2011 budget cycle. Lawmakers assume there will be at least three such boats. They also earmarked $2.5 million for finish design work on the 144-car ferry.
An additional $69.4 million is budgeted for 2011-13 to finish the three smaller boats. There also is $78 million in the budget, either to build a fourth 64-car vessel or to apply toward the 144-car ferry.
The long-range plan assumes that an additional $249 million would be spent on ferry construction in 2013-15, but lawmakers don’t know where most of that money would come from.
They will have only about $30 million on hand.
Moseley told members of the Senate Transportation Committee earlier this month that he doesn’t expect a decision to be made on whether to build a fourth 64-car ferry or the first 144-car ferry until the 2011 legislative session.
“We need both,” he said. “But my crystal ball is still fuzzy.”
Joseph Turner: 360-786-1826
joe.turner@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
Ferry facts
Four companies are working on different sections of the 64-car ferry for Washington State Ferries in order to finish the vessel in 18 months. State officials plan to put the boat into service in mid-2010.
Capacity Length
274 feet
Beam Draft Speed Cost (for first one) First ferry takesSecond also startsThird ferry takes
Port Townsend-on Port Townsend- Point Defiance-
Keystone routeKeystone routeTahlequah run
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