BY DAN ROSENHEIM
No one is selling ride tickets yet, but the cause of hovercraft ferry boats is attracting growing support around the Bay, having gone in the course of a year from little more than a gleam in the eye of aficionados to a substantive topic of study, planning and negotiation.
The flat-bottomed boats that float on a cushion of air could provide long-awaited ferry service to communities in the Sacramento River Delta and in the South Bay, where sedimentation makes it difficult to use traditional ferries. Increasingly, businesses and local governments in these areas are looking to waterways as an alternative to nightmarish commutes on traffic-clogged highways.
One indication of the flying boats’ growing appeal was last month’s meeting of the Bay Area Council’s Water Transit Subcommittee, where hovercraft were the leading topic of discussion. The meeting took place in Foster City, whose mayor, Sam Hindi, was among those expressing great enthusiasm for hovercraft.
“Foster City is a natural candidate for a hovercraft hub,” Hindi said in a subsequent interview, noting that the San Mateo-Hayward bridge is clogged with cars every day, with currently no good alternatives nearby for crossing the Bay. “We see hovercraft as a connection to regional transit centers and shallow-water communities.”
Single-occupancy vehicle traffic across the San Mateo Bridge has increased sharply in recent years, to more than 100,000 trips a day. That’s comparable to the Golden Gate Bridge and second only to the Bay Bridge among eight Bay Area Caltrans bridges, and it poses a special problem for businesses whose employees have to brave the commute.
In an effort to move things from the drawing board to the Bay, Hindi said he has begun discussions about launching a hovercraft pilot program. A key part of that would be the creation of a Transportation Management Association (TMA), a public-private partnership that would include local government and businesses of all sizes. The TMA might explore land and water transportation solutions, but the anticipated emphasis is on the water.
“I’m extremely excited about the hovercraft part,” Hindi said. “It’s the fastest, the least expensive and the most impactful.”
Hindi said a natural landing location for hovercraft exists near Foster City’s northern border, above Third Avenue. And while he emphasized that discussions are at a very early stage, Hindi said it’s not inconceivable that a trial boat could be in the water in two years, provided businesses sign on.
“There’s definitely an interest,” he said. “Nobody has promised us anything, but this is where we’re heading.”
Meanwhile, 20-odd miles to the north, another important milestone was crossed in San Francisco with the kickoff of a Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) feasibility study on hovercraft. That took the form of a first formal meeting between key WETA staff and the full consulting team from AECOM, the Los Angeles-based engineering company hired to examine hovercraft’s possible role in the Bay.
“It’s a big first step in a process that will take about a year,” said Nina Rannells, WETA executive director.
WETA’s study, which comes at cost of roughly $500,000, will have two principal parts, Rannells said. It will update work the agency did in 2011, incorporating changes in the technology and potential routes for hovercraft. And it will form two advisory committees—one of potential stakeholders, including communities and businesses, and the other to provide technical advice, including representatives from the Coast Guard and environmental regulators.
The meat of the work, Rannells said, will be establishing corridors that hovercraft might most usefully travel in the Bay. WETA has identified five such corridors, including runs to South Bay communities, towns in the Carquinez Strait, Treasure Island and some existing central Bay ferry runs.
These routes will be evaluated using four key criteria: the strength of the market (i.e., how many passengers might be attracted); the relative advantages of hovercraft versus traditional ferries; the level of interest in hovercraft expressed by local civil authorities; and the type of access that exists on land, including the key “last mile” between a landing site and other transportation systems.
Typically, Rannells has said it takes seven years to establish a new ferry route, from preliminary studies and proposals through engineering, bids, regulatory approvals and construction of terminals and boats. But new hovercraft routes could conceivably be established more quickly, she said. In part, that’s because hovercraft can dock on a relatively simple concrete pad, rather than an expensive ferry boat terminal in the water. But the process could also be accelerated by the growing sense of urgency around the Bay Area’s transportation difficulties.
“If the money were there, I think the projects could be moved along more quickly,” Rannells said.
As studies are launched in earnest, it remains unclear what agency or business might actually provide hovercraft service. Along with public ferry agencies, there is interest in the private sector from entrepreneurs and hovercraft manufacturers in other countries. The federal Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886, similar to the Jones Act, mandates that American ferries must be built by American workers, so a foreign manufacturer would have to establish a shipbuilding yard in this country to be in compliance.
Locally, a startup consulting company called HOVR has the stated objective of both building and operating hovercraft on the Bay, and it has produced schematics showing routes that as many as 30 of the vessels might take across the Bay, linking communities from Petaluma to San Leandro, Hercules to Fremont. But whether HOVR can acquire the financial and political capital it needs to make good on that vision remains an open question.
It is also unclear what regulatory obstacles potential hovercraft operators may face, particularly from the environmental community. The vessels are relatively noisy and typically run on traditional fossil fuels.
But none of these uncertainties seems to be dampening the growing enthusiasm for the flying boats, whose appeal is only magnified by their potential to carry freight, as well as passengers. “Carrying freight is not part of WETA’s purview,” said Rannells, “but there’s a lot of money in it.”
 Dan Rosenheim is a veteran Bay Area journalist who recently retired after 18 years as Vice President/News for KPIX-5 TV. Prior to going into broadcast, Rosenheim worked as a reporter, city editor and managing editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. Dan and his wife, Cindy Salans Rosenheim, live in San Francisco. |
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