RUMINATIONS ON THE DEATH OF A FERRY

By Christine Cordi

The American flag flew from the stern of the ferry as we passed the sleepy gray haze of Brickyard Cove. The sun hadn’t yet risen from its bed of clouds. It was hiding from us. This was as it should be, I thought. After all, that day was a funeral of sorts – it was the Richmond Ferry’s final day.

Riders had organized and made herculean efforts to save the ferry via last ditch marketing as well as governmental and regulatory appeals. Their grass roots energies represented what is brave and good and true about this country. Nonetheless the ferry died shortly after its first birthday.

How did this happen? Why didn’t it attract more riders? Was it the demographics? Richmond plus the surrounding cities have populations totaling more than 200,000, with many thousands commuting to San Francisco. Was it the transit time? 45 minutes isn’t very long from Richmond, but it certainly wasn’t an advantage. Was it a lack of skilled marketing? Red & White understood tourists, not commuter behavior, and this weak point could not compensate for others. Also unfortunately Red & White did not reach out to the rider group and utilize them early in the game. How about the sailing schedule: two boats in the morning, two boats in the evening, the last of which left at 6 P.M.? Pretty constraining. How about a highly priced, unsubsidized one-way ticket with a cost which escalated to $5.75 coupled to the narrow choice of departures? A killer, since those people who could afford such a steep price may easily be those who have to work past the last ferry of the day.

Wisdom comes with age they say. Yet confusion and questions seem to reign as we and America get older. Thanks to countless auto commuters, the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge has made it into the big time. Approaches from the east are blocked solid from about 7 A.M. to 9:30 A.M. or later each workday. Like vultures surveying carrion below, noisy traffic helicopters are now attracted to this grisly scene of bumper to bumper gridlock and rising clouds of exhaust fumes. Quite a number of these East Bay commuters travel via Marin to San Francisco, as Marinites can attest. Might some of them have ridden the Richmond Ferry instead? Or perhaps some of their brethren clogging I-80 for miles might have ridden the Richmond Ferry? Too many chose to remain in their cars, or worse, their SUVs. They and other American car commuters are major contributors in making the spider’s web which in turn has caught us all.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 30% in the last 100 years, resulting in an increase in temperatures and a one foot increase in the sea level as the polar ice caps melt. The 1990’s were the hottest decade on record. The United States is in first place and responsible for one-quarter of the greenhouse gases of the entire world. American cars spew out carbon dioxide and rank as the fifth highest global warming polluter, right after the nation of Japan, just by themselves. Without any changes in man’s behavior, the sea is projected to rise by 2-3 feet as the earth warms an additional 2 to 6 degrees by the year 2100. Floods, species extinctions, devastation of ecosystems, rising pestilence as mosquito borne infections spread to geographic areas (like the U.S.) which will suffer dengue fever, malaria and hantavirus. Is this the kind of world we want to bequeath to our children? So that we can ride around in the waning days in our cars and behemoth SUVs, stereos on, pretending that we are not contributing to their demise? Once the warming gets far enough along it cannot be quickly reversed; later in this century there will be no last minute scientific fix available. We have to start getting out of our cars now. It’s time we prove that we love the earth’s future, and our children, more than we love our cars.

It’s up to us to loudly clamor for increased subsidies for Bay Area mass transit, so as to make it more widespread and attractive to car commuters, particularly for the worst commute corridors. It’s up to us to loudly clamor for more water transit which can take advantage of the uncongested Bay waters, link cities around the Bay and push for water transit with environmentally friendly technology. It’s up to us to elect and then jawbone officials who support in deed and not just in word, an effective regional mass transit system in the Bay Area, vs. the current byzantine and encrusted model of regional transit problem-solving. It’s up to us to change our own daily transportation behaviors plus also take action on a national and global scale if we can.