20 Years of Maritime Memories

 BY JOEL WILLIAMS

In January 2000, Bay Crossings founder Bobby Winston and Inlandboatmen’s Union leader Marina Secchitano personally handed out the first issue of Bay Crossings to ferryboat commuters as they boarded and disembarked from the boats at the San Francisco Ferry Building.

Just two months earlier, Governor Gray Davis had signed into law a bill creating the Bay Area Water Transit Authority (WTA), but many details—including funding for the newly formed agency—were still to be determined. “The San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority established by this legislation has the potential to provide desperately needed alternatives for commuters and other travelers, and to restore what was once a proud Bay Area tradition,” wrote the governor in a signing message.

But the very existence of the fledgling agency was an open question at the time. Environmentalists were worried about emissions, and a slew of other public transportation agencies were concerned about reductions in their own funding and about losing influence over public transportation decisions. It would take almost a year before WTA had funding and held its first meeting in December 2000.

The new agency was proposed by a Blue Ribbon Task Force that consisted of an impressive group of local mayors, politicians and dignitaries. The task force, created by previous legislation, concluded in April 1999 that water transit is the most economically feasible and environmentally compatible investment in transportation that can significantly reduce congestion and improve mobility in the Bay Area. The task force proposed a new ferry system with many new terminals throughout the Bay and hundreds of miles of new commuter, recreational, airport and cargo water transit routes.

Ron Cowan, who was a member of the task force, approached Bobby Winston with the idea of creating a publication to advocate for and document the establishment of comprehensive regional ferry service. Bay Crossings’ early mission was to help garner support for the WTA so that proper funding would allow the agency to prosper and succeed in its lofty goal of establishing a robust regional ferry system.

All 15,000 copies of the first issue of Bay Crossings were snapped up in less than a week. That issue also contained a call for ferry commuters to unite and join in supporting a new nonprofit organization called Friends of a Regional Ferry System. Readers were told that membership expresses support for fast, frequent and environmentally friendly ferry service. Donations were encouraged to help support the publication of the first issues of Bay Crossings to keep members and the general public informed on the progress of WTA and other waterfront related topics.

The first article in the first issue of Bay Crossings included this statement: “Bay Crossings will appear monthly. It will feature in-depth articles of interest to ferry riders about cultural, environmental and maritime issues relating to transportation and San Francisco Bay.”

Within a month, Friends of a Regional Ferry System had grown to more than 3,000 people and had raised $10,000 to cover the initial printing and mailing costs associated with the production of the first few issues of Bay Crossings. In time, advertising revenue would take the place of donations and we were off to the races.

According to Winston, the success of WTA and the establishment of a comprehensive regional ferry service were by no means preordained: “The lay of the land back then was we had a couple of ferry lines, but they were residual from after the 1989 earthquake and they were barely holding on at like 25 to 50 percent capacity. If you were to have said back then that people would be having fights over parking spaces and that there would be ridership over 100 percent on some routes causing passengers to be left behind, they would have thought you were a lunatic. I mean, nobody expected ferry service in the Bay Area would become popular.”

Over the next few years, Bay Crossings grew in size, coverage and popularity and Winston made some key partnerships that brought in new staff with connections to the Examiner newspaper. Joyce Aldana became the editor (and subsequently publisher) and was responsible for bringing on Bill Picture, who was popular as a “man about town” writer for the Examiner. Aldana secured much-needed advertising revenue and provided leadership in the early years. Michelle Moday edited the publication from 2005 until mid-2007, when Patrick Runkle assumed the position that he still holds today. I was brought on board in late 2005 as an advertising salesperson and soon began contributing articles, ultimately assuming the role of publisher in August 2007.

Francisco Arreola has been the art director for Bay Crossings since the very first issue. He is mostly responsible for the look and feel of the publication. His input and intuitiveness in producing layouts and other visual features of the publication have been absolutely stellar and we could not have done this without him.

We established the Green Pages in 2007 to add a dedicated section covering environmental issues, and that feature is still in the very capable hands of Bill Picture. Patrick Burnson has been doing double duty for well over a decade covering the Working Waterfront column as well as Cultural Currents under his pen name, Paul Duclos. And Matt Larson continues to produce personal profiles of the ferry crewmembers that many of our readers interact with during their daily commutes to work; he will soon feature the 100th person to share their story with us.

Bay Crossings has also established longtime partnerships with local nonprofit organizations. Baykeeper keeps people informed of its environmental advocacy mission to protect the Bay, which we look forward to continuing in the future. We are also planning on working with the Aquarium of the Bay again in 2020 on a monthly column focusing on what goes on below the surface of our beloved Bay.

We would also like to thank all of the advertisers who have supported us through the years. Specifically, our current roster of supporters includes Bay Ship & Yacht, Big Bus Tours, Blue & Gold Fleet, the Crab House and Franciscan Restaurants, Golden Gate Ferry, Jack London Square, MTC, PIER39, Power Engineering, Red & White Fleet, Rosenblum Cellars, Soma’s restaurants in San Francisco and Sausalito, the Training Resources Maritime Institute and WETA. We could have never made it this far without them.

Over the last 20 years, Bay Crossings has stuck to its original commitment to evangelize and support the establishment of comprehensive regional ferry service. We celebrated when WTA became the Water Emergency Transit Authority (WETA) in 2007, emphasizing the importance of ferries in the event of an earthquake or other disaster affecting transportation in the Bay Area.

The agency assumed operations of the Alameda/Oakland, Vallejo and Harbor Bay ferry routes and has added new service to South San Francisco and Richmond in recent years with a new Alameda route from Seaplane Lagoon scheduled to open this summer. Under the brand of San Francisco Bay Ferry, WETA has grown to include 15 ferryboats with two new additional vessels expected to arrive in 2020. When completed in 2021, the latest boat to be approved will bring the fleet to 17 vessels with a total capacity of 6,000 passengers.

Long-term goals of WETA include adding even more routes and increasing the frequency of existing commuter runs that reach capacity during peak travel times. You can expect Bay Crossings to cover new ferry services to Mission Bay and Treasure Island in the coming years and surely more after that.

It has truly been our pleasure reporting on the burgeoning Bay Area ferry service and other waterfront issues over the past 20 years. We look forward to continuing the ride well into the future, as we feel there is still much more to achieve in the development of our comprehensive regional ferry system. We are happy to take you along with us for that ride and hope that you are enjoying a spectacular view of the scenery on a ferry while you read this now. There is no doubt that it is the best way to travel around the Bay!