A Curmudgeonly Review of the new Alameda – Oakland ferry Peralta

By Graham Claytor

We can begin with the good things. She’s new. She’s clean. She’s quieter. She has a historic name, from the old (and ill-fated) Key System ferry. She has electric heaters on the outside back deck. She has an occupied lower back deck with seats and a fresh water wash for bicycles. She has three access points from the top deck to the lower deck.

However, the designers were completely clueless as to how a ferry works on the inside. They essentially decided that all transit users were like BART passengers and traveled in groups of one. Thus the floor plan allows only a handful of people to sit together. The upper deck exemplifies this concept. There are exactly four tables for four people each, which if full, would allow only a few people the opportunity to sit facing each other and socialize. The back deck is worse, as each row of bench seats faces outward, toward the water, and no one faces each other. Then there is an interior section, facing a bulkhead, dubbed “the movie gallery” by some riders. It has three rows of nine seats and one row of eight seats facing forward toward the bulkhead, looking for all the world as if the movie were about to begin.

One of the main differences between ferry services and other transit services is simply the opportunity to meet your neighbors and discuss the day’s events. For those who bother to read history, the 1930 accounts of ferry service reported on the camaraderie that developed on board, with special holiday events and even live music. The news stories about the end of the ferries recounted the laments of passengers and “crying towels” with bits of poetry were handed out on the last runs. Thus the new Peralta completely ignores history and has an interior designed to herd the commuters into seats of two, with few facing each other.

There are other flaws. The snack bar is located inconveniently close to the main entrance, so that the line backs up into those entering the vessel. And despite years of comments, the passenger loading system still uses Noah’s biblical design. The capacity of this two-decked vessel is limited to 330, a number only made practicable by the dot bombs, layoffs and the recession. This vessel is also a victim of the currently popular mantra, “The currency of transit is speed.”

High-speed vessels are more expensive to build, maintain and operate. Thus the commuter/taxpayer gets less boat for the money and pays more for the higher operating costs. Further, for reliable service, there must be at least two boats that can operate at the same speed, so that when one is down, the other can maintain the schedule. But the Peralta is a 26-knot vessel, faster than the Encinal and much faster than the 18-knot Bay Clipper and Flyer. But for all this speed that we have paid extra for, there will be no schedule improvements because there is no back up boat with the same capabilities.

Also, a little, fast ferry on a relatively short run that can only load two people at a time creates a new transit concept of taking longer to dock, unload and load at both ends than the entire crossing. If we were really interested in improving the performance, we should be looking at dock modifications and wider doors that would reduce the unproductive dwell time. That would allow larger, slower vessels with reduced capital costs, higher capacity and lower operating expenses to use the same schedule we have today. But don’t take this critic’s word for it, look up Max Ebb’s article in the September 2001 Latitude 38 titled, “Ferry Tales.” He notes that when you double the size of the ferry, you can cut fuel consumption per passenger in half (assuming you can fill up the boat). Doubling the speed increases fuel consumption per passenger by a factor of four (more if the boat is not full). The maintenance savings of slower revolving diesels should just be plain obvious.

Once again we have transit planners ignoring history. When the Bay was home to real commuter ferries in 1920, some 22,657,418 transbay passengers were carried on large, slower vessels. Yet how slow is slow? The scheduled running time of Southern Pacific’s Alameda to San Francisco service was twenty minutes, about what it is today (the moles were closer to San Francisco and ferries suffered no “slow bells” in the estuary; docking and unloading took only a few minutes, due to wide doors and “V” shaped docks). And neither the Alameda nor the Oakland Mole had a single parking place, for every 32 seconds in rush hours, a train headed from the mole to take passengers back home in Oakland.

We had a system that worked extremely well and actually operated without subsidies. If we could only convince transit planners to rethink their vision of a fleet of expensive, high-speed, small ferries zipping around the bay like water spiders, we might actually come up with a system that would operate efficiently well into this century.

Overall rating (this was supposed to be a review of the Peralta): Bad concept; poor execution. It looks like we’ve got yet another vessel that would be ideal for the Harbor Bay service.

Oh, and the history of the original Peralta? She was completed for the Key System on March 15, 1927 with turbo-electric engines generating 2,600 indicated horsepower. But bad luck quickly followed, as dozens of passengers were swept overboard on February 17, 1928 when a ballast tank failed to drain and the passengers surged forward, dipping the bow under water while nearing the Ferry Building. Five were killed, making this the worst ferry accident in the history of San Francisco Bay. Then, while minding her own business on May 6, 1933, the Key System Pier where she was tied up caught fire, heavily damaging the Peralta. She was sold for salvage to the Puget Sound Navigation Company and was rebuilt as the Kalakala, where she then enjoyed years of service and a bit of notoriety as the World’s only streamlined ferry. We trust our Peralta will do better, although ours has already suffered a gear-box failure, taking her out of service for several weeks.