How A Monthly Scoops the Dailies

Last month, Bay Crossings carried a report about Blue & Gold Fleet filing a discontinuance of its Alameda Oakland Ferry Service. It seems that only Bay Crossings bothers to follow what’s up at the California Public Utilities Commission. The city of Alameda deserves some of the credit for the resulting feeding frenzy for being so secretive about its on going contract negotiations, not bothering to keep the riders and the general public up to date.

Thus, last month’s story generated a lot of heat and very little light, as it appears that the daily press and television did little more than read the headline and jumped to a whole lot of conclusions. One, for example, is that the Alameda Oakland Ferry will end in January. For those who might be confused about what’s going on – here’s the latest news.

Sources at Blue & Gold Fleet maintain that the PUC filing was only a negotiating tactic to get the city to move off dead center in its contract negotiations. Sources at the city say that they are very close to a contract agreement with their carrier. But they warned that any new agreement would have to be ratified by both the Port of Oakland and the city of Alameda and that a cost plus contract similar to Vallejo’s could leave the city and the Port exposed to cost overages.

So will there be a new contract? That is apparently up for grabs at this time, although the city of Alameda and reportedly, the Port of Oakland both filed protests at the PUC to delay the end of the contract service (look out – there’s another scoop from a reporter that can read). Again, Alameda and the Port have remained very quiet about their recent actions, but reportedly, this can also be viewed as a “negotiating” tactic.

However, as a general observation, negotiations that take place before an administrative law judge generally are not considered harmonious. And to add to the fun and games, (Scoop Warning) an association of ferry riders, the Alameda Commuters Club filed a lengthy protest of the same abandonment.

A spokesperson for the club noted, “We are interested in seeing the ferry service continue and can only wonder why the city of Alameda and the Port of Oakland are burdened by managing a ferry service when we have a Water Transit Authority that was created to manage ferry services.” The Spokesperson added that they have serious concerns with the contract operator ending in January, as the back-up vessel ENCINAL is scheduled for engine replacement and will not be available for service. They noted that no other operator has back up vessels that could operate the current schedules.

Thus the potential abandonment of the service at that time by Blue & Gold could conceivably impact the level of service. However, the spokesperson noted that it was not fair to force an unwilling operator to continue and said, “We would hope that the negotiating parties could reach an interim agreement to operate the service until September or later, when the new maintenance and fueling facility and additional back up boats will make it easy for a new contract operator to run a reliable service.”