The full economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Bay Area’s ferry services in March.
On March 16, the City of San Francisco and other local jurisdictions issued shelter-in-place orders requiring individuals to stay at home, with some exceptions for essential travel and activities. The order’s implications on water transport in the Bay were immediately clear, as ferries quickly emptied of passengers.
Fare box revenue typically makes up about 60 percent of the Water Emergency Transportation Authority’s (WETA) budget, according to Thomas Hall, WETA’s public information and marketing manager. Normally, Hall said, this is a good thing, because the system doesn’t require large subsidies to keep running smoothly.
But now, revenue is down about 96 percent, according to Hall. This is partly due to WETA’s decision to cut back on ferry services in the face of the pandemic; even before that, Hall said, “we were seeing ridership plummet.”
The monthly WETA Board of Directors meeting was held telephonically for the first time ever. During the meeting, on March 19, board members assessed how the transit agency would operate going forward. The main agenda item was to prevent mass crew layoffs with WETA’s contractor Blue & Gold Fleet. The board passed a resolution to fund staff until the next meeting, which was scheduled at the time for April 2.
“One of the things that we were asked to do was ensure that the crews all remained in employee-paid status,” said WETA Executive Director Nina Rannells. “Which we’ve done, and we’ve extended that [until the next WETA board meeting on April 9].”
Meanwhile, ferry transit has had to adapt to the crisis. To respect social distancing, ferry ridership is being capped on certain vessels to enable passengers to keep at least two or three empty seats in between them, said Hall. For example, the 6 a.m. ferry from Vallejo to San Francisco can usually hold up to 445 people, said Hall. But now, “just to err on the safe side, we would cap it at 120,” he said.
And new additional policies have been enacted to help minimize person-to-person contact between crew and passengers, such as a “self-fare verification” for passengers with paper tickets, said Hall. In the past, the passenger would hand a paper ticket to a crewmember, who would tear it and hand it back the passenger. Now, from six feet away, passengers must show crew members the info on the ticket and then tear it themselves.
“We’re instructing passengers to try to remain at least six feet away from crew members at all times, and six feet away from each other when they’re standing in line or getting off the ferry as well,” said Hall.
Despite some cost savings, such as using less fuel with fewer boats running services, labor is one of WETA’s biggest costs, said Hall. And WETA is occupying crew in the meantime with training and maintenance work that would not have been addressed during normal operations. In the event of an emergency, ferry crews and captains need to be ready and available.
WETA is not just a commuter transit agency, but it is also designed to be a resource during a disaster, such as an earthquake, whenever other forms of transportation may be unavailable.
“Here we have a pandemic,” said WETA boardmember and Alameda County Fire Department Operations Chief Jeff DelBono. “If we’ve got to move first responders or people, you’d rather do it on an open-air boat than in some kind of bus or BART system.”
“I think it’s very important that we find a way to keep the boats in standby mode and keep our crews who know how to run those boats paid and ready to go in case we need them,” said DelBono.
And he believes that the staff is essential to maintain the ferry system. “It’s so important we keep those personnel in a paid status,” he said. “If we lay off those captains and deckhands, it’s going to be hard to get them back.”
“And they’re the only ones that know how to operate those boats, and the mechanics, and the engineers, and all of them, you want to keep that operation going,” said DelBono.
WETA Board Chairperson Jim Wunderman agreed. “Our hope was that we could keep as much of the staff on board as we could,” he said. “Because that way, we’re ready for a different disaster that could strike during this period, which is horrible to think about, but it’s possible.”
“We always thought that in a region-wide emergency,” said Wunderman, “that these vessels would be used to move people, emergency personnel, emergency equipment and those kinds of things.”
But it’s been estimated that because of COVID-19, about $4 million will be the agency’s budget shortfall, which is what the board has requested in aid from regional, state and federal sources, said Hall.
“We’re working with Assemblymember Bonta and Assemblymember Chiu and our lobbyists to try to get aid through the state,” said DelBono. The $2 trillion federal stimulus package that passed recently also included a provision for about $1.3 billion for Bay Area transit. DelBono hopes that WETA will receive some of that funding as well.
According to Wunderman, the amount of funding that WETA would get from the federal stimulus package would depend on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC).
“It’s a lot of money until you divide it up amongst 28 agencies, but we’ll get some share of it, I think,” said Wunderman. He believes that WETA will most likely know more about funding options by its next meeting on April 9.
The agency will continue to fund for full crewing until then, said Hall, and staff will provide the Board with an update on ridership, services, crew activities and efforts to secure funding at that meeting.
But regardless of what amount of money ultimately materializes, it could just be enough to tide things over until the end of this current fiscal year, according to Hall. As for next year, “No one knows really whether this is going to linger for several months or whether things will be back to normal by then,” said Hall.
Rannells has been considering how restarting normal operations will work. “It’s upon us to just look at what is it that we think that we can sustain over the midterm,” she said. “In terms of retaining crews, and what do we need to start up service.”
“I think we need to look at the immediate term and we also need to start looking at the foreseeable future,” she said. “And that future is probably relatively bleak, in terms of we rely on a high ridership to help fund what we do.”
And, looking at the big picture, “If we’re going to be in a recession, I think that’s going to make our finances much more complicated as we move into next year,” said Rannells.
Going forward, WETA boardmembers have been discussing what changes should be made to secure the future of the ferry system. “One of the things that this teaches us is you need to plan for the unexpected, because this virus wasn’t expected,” said Wunderman. “And now we’re going through all of this post-appearance of the virus planning which could have taken place probably before.”
“I think we’re going to find out whether everybody thinks we’re an emergency agency or not,” said Wunderman. “I think that conversation is sort of yet to be had.”
