Most dictionaries define ferries as boats or vessels that regularly carry passengers and goods over a relatively short distance. The Staten Island Ferry is a prime example, with its 25-minute ride between Manhattan and Staten Island. Closer to Maryland is the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, which carries vehicles and their passengers between the New Jersey Shore and southern Delaware.
It is a much longer trip at 85 minutes but often a timesaver compared to driving more than three hours between the two points. Maryland once had quite a few Chesapeake Bay ferries, too, going all the way back to the 19th-century steamboat era, but regular service faded away as automobiles arrived, modern highways were built, and the first Chesapeake Bay Bridge opened in 1952. There’s now a move afoot to beef up Chesapeake Bay ferry service.
envisions all sorts of cross-Bay routes, including from Baltimore to Annapolis to Kent Island to St. Michaels and on to Kent Narrows and then Rock Hall. Sounds like quite a boat trip, right? And that, alas, is exactly the conundrum.
The various routes — seven altogether — cover an awful lot of water, and they would likely do so infrequently. That Baltimore-to-Rock Hall trip is envisioned as potentially one-way in each direction once-a-day. And it would take eight hours.
Let’s repeat that. . One would have to get stuck in a truly epic traffic backup at the Bay Bridge to think you might save time.
And then there’s the matter of finding oneself in Rock Hall, which is a bit off the beaten path even by Eastern Shore standards. That’s not a criticism. It’s a charming Kent County community.
But the challenge here is calling such a boat ride a “ferry” trip. What we’re really talking about is an excursion boat. And there’s nothing wrong with that either.
The trip sounds like it could be fun — just as others from Baltimore to Havre de Grace or Annapolis to Cambridge sound like a good time, too. But here’s where we would offer a word of caution. As noted in the , these ferries won’t be financially self-sustaining.
The costs are simply too high. They require public and/or private investment to make them financially viable otherwise that Baltimore to Rock Hall trip might run passengers a whopping $200 each way. There’s certainly an argument to nurture tour boats.
Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, for example, would benefit from an influx of additional tourists looking to visit the National Aquarium or the Maryland Science Center or other Inner Harbor attractions. So would Eastern Shore towns with an active tourist trade like Oxford and St. Michaels.
What we would not like to see is for taxpayers to be taken for a ride. The same feasibility study looks at all kinds of sources of potential public funding. They include a Maryland “transit innovation” grant, a federal “marine highway” grant (a fund usually reserved for commercial shipping), and Federal Transit Authority money (including a program to promote more traditional rural ferries).
There’s even an expectation of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions if ferry service take vehicles off the roads. We’re all for promoting electric or hybrid vessels but let’s not overstate their potential impact. Even backers of these ferry routes expect only about 50,000 passengers the first year.
Would all these adventurous souls otherwise have been driving to Rock Hall or Oxford or Solomons Island? Again, that’s not a criticism of tour boats. They’re great. And surely the Chesapeake Bay — and the people who live around it — would stand to benefit if more of us had a chance to see it up close and appreciate how human activity from every clogged storm drain to every overly-fertilized field to every flush of the commode can have an .
If we are to be good stewards of what is inarguably this state’s most precious natural resource, we ought to take a closer look at it every once in a while, if only to appreciate its extraordinary beauty. But that also gives us an idea: As passenger ferries, we have doubts about the financial returns. But if tour operators offered instruction on Chesapeake Bay water quality and the steps each of us can take to save the Bay? What if public education, as much as public transportation, was the point? Well, now such moveable classrooms might be worth a substantial public investment.
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