Glen Cove misses deadline to start ferry service

The City of Glen Cove has missed a January 1 deadline to start ferry service from the new Glen Cove Ferry terminal.  $16.6 million in grants from the Federal Highway Administration was used to cover most of the $22.5 million cost to build the terminal building and adjacent bulkhead and dredge Glen Cove Creek to support passenger ferry service.  A condition of the grant money was service beginning on or before January 1, 2019, but with no regularly scheduled service in place, the City is at risk of being ordered to pay back the grant money.

Despite missing the deadline, Glen Cove Mayor Timothy Tenke has said over the past several months that he is confident the city would not be expected to pay back the grant money, and that the city has requested an extension of the deadline.  Tenke told Newsday that FHWA officials have not warned the city that the deadline would be strictly enforced, and said that highway officials were satisfied that the funding was used properly.

The Glen Cove ferry landing in use during summer 2017 trackwork
(Photo: The LIRR Today)

The deadline passes as the city struggles to court an operator willing to take on the new service.  A request for proposals issued in 2016 after the construction of the ferry terminal was completed did not receive any responses.  The MTA and LIRR utilized the ferry landing and associated facilities during the summer of 2017, when the LIRR’s response to Amtrak trackwork in and around NY-Penn Station included a free ferry from Glen Cove to Manhattan.  While the trip was easy and the scenery was phenomenal, an inconvenient schedule put out by the LIRR drew complaints and kept ridership low.  Just about 45 people used the service each of the couple times I took it.  A ferry from Glen Cove was also included in LIRR's July 2014 strike contingency plan, but that, of course, didn't pan out.

Financing and subsidy remains the critical issue, and determining whether someone will be willing to put up funding to subsidize fares  to a level at which they can be competitive enough to attract riders is a major factor that needs to be figured out.  The city's goal with the original RFP was to run the service without subsidy, where fares cover the full operating cost, like NYWaterway and Seastreak services between New Jersey and New York, but charging full economic fares would likely set the price point too high to attract enough riders to sustain the service.

RXR, a Uniondale-based property developer, has said they are willing to provide $1 million in subsidy for the first two years of ferry operation after most of their $1 billion Garvies Point development (located right across the street from the ferry terminal) is open for business.  RXR is currently expecting half of the 1,110 units to be ready by spring 2020.

A service plan study completed last fall by TMS Waterfront found that to sustain the service without subsidy, one-way fares would need to be $22.50 with 62 passengers per trip to break even.  The inevitability of high fares has scared operators away, as it would be extremely difficult to attract riders and compete with the highly-subsidized LIRR (where one-way fares are $13.50 during rush hour, soon to be $14.00).  LIRR Oyster Bay Branch trips are subsidized by an average of 83%, making the full economic fare $50.62 each way, much more than the ferry.  You can read more about the ferry fare pricing conundrum here.

The first two years of RXR subsidy would bring the one-way cost down to $15 each way, which is much closer to the LIRR fare.  The question of longer-term subsidy remains up in the air.  The city has suggested long-term subsidy is beyond their means, and it probably should not the responsibility of a local municipality to subsidize commuter traffic to this extent.  If RXR is to use the convenience of the ferry service as a selling point for their Garvies Point development, then there may be the possibility of them supporting the service further beyond $500k/year for the first two years, and those discussions were reportedly happening as of this past summer.  City officials also say "conversations are ongoing" with Governor Cuomo's office regarding potential state assistance, but likewise there have not yet been any concrete progress.  Tenke said that two operators submitted proposals early in 2018, but would require subsidy in order to operate.

Additional potential sources of subsidy not mentioned but worth consideration is the MTA.  The MTA's legislative charge, rooted in NYS Public Authorities Law §1264(1), states the agency exists to support

“…the continuance, further development and improvement of commuter transportation and other services related thereto within the metropolitan commuter transportation district, including but not limited to such transportation by railroad, omnibus, marine and air, in accordance with the provisions of this title [and] to develop and implement a unified mass transportation policy for such district.” 

The TMS study recommended three daily round-trips, with three westbound trips in the morning and three eastbound trips in the evening, with all trips stopping at both the Midtown-East 35th Street and Wall Street-Pier 11 landings (the LIRR ferry service only offered one round-trip per day to each landing at inconvienent times).  A draft ferry service plan was submitted to the the NYS Department of Transportation in October and is currently under review.

The city says they are planning to take another crack at the request for proposal to find a ferry operator sometime this year to begin service in the spring of 2020.  We'll have to see what becomes of that...