A new law brings the Vallejo, Alameda/Oakland and Harbor Bay ferries under the aegis of an expanded Water Transit Authority (WTA), now renamed the Water Emergency Transit Authority (WETA). Riders have raised questions about how this change will affect ferry service and what role the new WETA will have. Here, Bay Crossings addresses some of these questions.
Published: October, 2007
Role, Responsibilities of State/Regional Water Transit Authority Expanded
What changes might ferryriders expect? Will service or schedules change?
Not much will happen anytime soon, and when changes do occur they will be for the better. No service will be cut; if anything, the number of runs will eventually be expanded. This change has been long in the making, and the long-time initiative of the Bay Council, a leading planning think-tank, as well as many civic, corporate and community leaders. Things look very promising indeed for ferryriders. Much more money—estimates vary, but potentially as much as $300 million—will make possible more and better service.
But new service won’t happen overnight. First, there will be a lengthy process of working out the details of combining the Vallejo and Alameda/Oakland operations, a task that must address a host of legal, political and community concerns. This could take more than a year.
WTA is already well involved in planning possible new service for South San Francisco and Berkeley, but new service for any community not presently served by ferries will not happen quickly. Emergency preparations, which will principally take the form of stand-by docking and passenger loading facilities, will take months if not years to get started.
In the meantime, service for ferryriders is likely to remain pretty much unchanged.
What was the thinking behind the change?
The Water Transit Authority (WTA) was created to plan and pave the way for a comprehensive regional ferry service. Specifically, it was responsible for generating massive environmental reports. Along the way it built trust and understanding amongst the region’s communities and institutions.
Meanwhile, state leaders like State Senator Don Perata have become increasingly concerned about the Bay Area’s readiness to cope with a natural disaster or terrorist strike. The consensus is that our preparations are insufficient to avoid the tragic consequences and buffoonery that transpired in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. To address this shortcoming, the WTA’s mandate has been expanded to include emergency planning. Consistent with this change, the agency’s name will be changed to the Water Emergency Transit Authority (WETA). Geography and history show that water transit is the proper focus of rescue planning, as evidenced by the emergency responses after both the 1906 and the 1989 earthquakes.
How will the new agency be governed?
The eleven members of the current all-volunteer WTA board of directors, ably led by Charlene Haught Johnson, have worked their hearts out for over six years. Through endless meeting after endless meeting, they have done the heavy lifting of advancing the vision of a comprehensive regional ferry system.
The governor appoints three members to the new board, and the Senate and Assembly get one appointment each, for a total of five members in all. The community is relying on State Senator Perata to do all he can to encourage the appointment of board members friendly to ferryriders.
