Great Lakes Cities

[Crawford]

Ferries are extremely expensive to operate. Multiples more expensive than buses/trains. Make no sense unless highly subsidized or demand from those willing to pay big commuting costs.

There are far more ferry commuters in NYC metro than anywhere else in North America. The market only exists because of all the islands, and is either massively govt. supported (SI Ferry, NYC Ferry, PA, etc.) or targeting high-wage commuters seeking to avoid extreme congestion (SeaStreak, NY Waterway, NY Water Taxi, etc.).

NYC is putting serious resources into ferry expansion, but it's not particularly efficient, so the routes target neighborhoods without easy subway/express bus service into Manhattan. NJ routes are mostly lightly subsidized and therefore extremely expensive. The SI Ferry has by far the highest ridership though (75k per day).

[Steely Dan]

There are currently only two cross-lake ferries on the great lakes that I am aware of, and both of them are on lake Michigan.



- SS Badger, a classic old coal fired steamer from the '50s, it can hold 620 passengers and 180 cars and makes the 60 mile journey between Manitowoc and Luddington in 4 hours (15 mph average).


Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Badger



- Lake Express, a modern high speed catamaran built in 2004 with a capacity of 250 passengers and 46 cars. It goes between Milwaukee and Muskegon and makes the 80 mile crossing in 2.5 hours (32 mph average).


Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Express

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There are far more ferry commuters in NYC metro than anywhere else in North America.

Seattle's ferries provide more trips than New York's, according to APTA's Q3 2019 ridership report:

Kitsap Transit: 4k daily, 796.9k Q3
Washington State Ferries: 79.4k daily, 18,425.7 Q3
Seattle area: 19,222.6k Q3

PATH: 5.7k weekday, 1,076.2k Q3
Metro North Railroad: .9k weekday, 128.5 Q3
NYC DOT: (No daily provided), 17,640.1k Q3
New York Area: 18,844.8k Q3

APTA doesn't always list every agency. Perhaps there are others in both areas that are yet to be counted.

As for Canada, APTA doesn't seem to list BC Ferries--is that folded into Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority, which is listed at 4873.9k trips for Q3? Or is it that BC Ferries serves more than one metro? In any case, this Wikipedia page indicates BC Ferries provided nearly as many trips annually as did Washington State Ferries, circa 2015-16, so it's a pretty big system as well but may be serving both the Vancouver and Victoria metros.

[SIGSEGV]

We just need one of these :-p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSC_Francisco

(although it's probably way overkill for this route).

That looks like it does Buenos Aires to Montevideo in a scheduled time of 2:15 (https://www.buquebus.com/english/use...esandschedules ) , which looks to be a straight line distance of about 125 miles.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ now those are some serious, real-deal cruise ships.

We'll never see any cruise ship that size on the great lakes.

It would never fit through the st. Lawrence/welland canal locks.

So are those big tankers that ply the Great Lakes small enough to navigate the Welland Canal or were they built on the Great Lakes and have never left them (Lake Ontario excluded)? I suppose the Welland Canal could be rebuilt to accommodate bigger ships but they'd have to be a big economic payoff for doing so.

Btw, that's the Queen Mary 2 docked in Halifax. Cunard Line was founded by Haligonian Samuel Cunard as a service between Halifax and England. The visit was in honour of his hometown and Cunard Line's Halifax roots. That said, Halifax does attract cruise ships of that size on a regular basis.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by isaidso

So are those big tankers that ply the Great Lakes small enough to navigate the Welland Canal or were they built on the Great Lakes and have never left them (Lake Ontario excluded)?

there are currently 24 lake freighters over 740' in length that are too big to fit through the welland canal's locks and are thus forever "trapped" in the great lakes (not including lake ontario).

they were all built in great lakes ship yards and all of them sail with american-owned fleets because the lake ontario ports are too important to the canadian commercial shipping industry to have ships that can't get through the welland canal.

There are also locks between lakes Superior and Huron, but they're larger and can accommodate bigger ships up to 1,200' in length (the largest ship on the great lakes is 1,013' long).

[mrnyc]

there has been regular passenger and auto ferry service to the ohio lake erie islands and pelee island forever.

i dk how many annual passengers use the ferry services, but i did see that south bass island/put-in-bay drew 35k visitors the last weekend in july last year, which must have been a particularly big party weekend, as in the summer its known as the key west of the north.

https://www.visitputinbay.com/get-here/ferry-service/


there is also griffing air service for over 80yrs. when the ferries can't go in the winter its the only connection. the flights average 9k passengers per year with 3k flights.

something interesting is i think until recently there was a one room school house on put-in-bay and the teacher flew over there daily.


this is from 1962:

[Steely Dan]

^ yeah, there are passenger and car ferries serving dozens of various islands throughout the great lakes region, but the only two ferries that go clear across a great lake, from one side to the other, are the two lake michigan ferries i posted about earlier.

there was another cross lake ferry from toronto to rochester across lake ontario about 15 years ago, but it didn't last very long.

____________


it would be cool if there was a chicago to new buffalo ferry, but i think chicago is simply located too close to the bottom of lake michigan to make a long-distance cross-lake ferry viable. 99.9% of people would just drive instead of paying a couple of hundred bucks for ferry tickets.

as i mentioned before, ferries only make sense when there isn't a viable land option. with chicago being located very close to the bottom of lake michigan, it's always gonna have a viable land option, thus obviating the need for ferries.

[emathias]

I took the Lake Express in about 2005. It was a nice trip. I think the reason it goes from Milwaukee and not from Chicago is that from Chicago to St. Joseph is as little as a 90 minute drive in low traffic, and only 2 1/2 in more typical traffic. From Milwaukee to Muskegon is 4 1/2 to 5 hours driving, so a 2 1/2 hour ferry ride cuts your travel time in half for anyone west of Milwaukee going anywhere in central or northern parts of the Michigan mainland. And it's much more pleasant than driving anyway. It is spendy, though. I think we spent something like $160 or $180 total for a car and two adults, one-way, and a car and two adults nowadays looks to be around $295 one-way. People might spend that to turn a 5 hour trip to a 2 1/2 hour trip, but not for a trip that would likely not save any time at all. It is a nice boat ride, but not nice enough to justify prices only for the boat - it's about the time savings for the vast majority of passengers.

At the time I took it, I had just spent two weeks in Norway, and it reminded me a lot of many of the ferries along the West Coast of Norway.

[Nouvellecosse]

Put-in-Bay

Of all the places they could have put it

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

there are currently 24 lake freighters over 740' in length that are too big to fit through the welland canal's locks and are thus forever "trapped" in the great lakes (not including lake ontario).

they were all built in great lakes ship yards and all of them sail with american-owned fleets because the lake ontario ports are too important to the canadian commercial shipping industry to have ships that can't get through the welland canal.

There are also locks between lakes Superior and Huron, but they're larger and can accommodate bigger ships up to 1,200' in length (the largest ship on the great lakes is 1,013' long).

Are you saying that the Lake Ontario shipping industry wants the Welland Canal to be too small to accommodate those bigger tankers on the other Great Lakes as a form of protectionism? Sounds like something they would do.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Are you saying that the Lake Ontario shipping industry wants the Welland Canal to be too small to accommodate those bigger tankers on the other Great Lakes as a form of protectionism?

No, I'm not at all saying that.

The 4th and current iteration of the welland canal opened in 1932, so the decision to go with 750' locks was made roughly a century ago, back when that seemed like a prudent lock size given that there were no vessels on the lakes in those days that exceeded that size.

Then, starting in the 1970s, American ship builders started building ore boats that exceeded 750' in length because American shipping on the lakes has always been focused on the ports in lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie. The ports of lake Ontario and further down stream on the st. Lawrence have never been very prominent for American shipping interests on the lakes, so having ships that were too big to get through the welland canal, thus trapping said ships in the 4 upper lakes, was not seen as a terribly important issue.

However, from a Canadian perspective, the ports on lake Ontario and further downstream on the st. Lawrence have always been supremely important to Canadian shipping interests on the lakes, hence why all of the ships in the Canadian fleets still to this day max out at 740' in length, the welland canal/st. Lawrence seaway maximum.

There have been various plans over the decades to build a 5th welland canal with even bigger locks that could accommodate the largest of the ships on the lakes today, but it's never gotten past the planning stage due to money, I imagine.



Btw, the massive lake freighters I've been referencing, are self-unloading bulk carriers, not "tankers". They carry dry bulk goods like taconite (iron ore), coal, limestone, salt, grain, sand, etc., not liquid petroleum products, which are primarily transported via pipelines in the great lakes region.

There are some "tankers" on the lakes, but they're generally much smaller, in the 300 - 500' length range.

[north 42]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ yeah, there are passenger and car ferries serving dozens of various islands throughout the great lakes region, but the only two ferries that go clear across a great lake, from one side to the other, are the two lake michigan ferries i posted about earlier.

there was another cross lake ferry from toronto to rochester across lake ontario about 15 years ago, but it didn't last very long.

____________


it would be cool if there was a chicago to new buffalo ferry, but i think chicago is simply located too close to the bottom of lake michigan to make a long-distance cross-lake ferry viable. 99.9% of people would just drive instead of paying a couple of hundred bucks for ferry tickets.

as i mentioned before, ferries only make sense when there isn't a viable land option. with chicago being located very close to the bottom of lake michigan, it's always gonna have a viable land option, thus obviating the need for ferries.

The Kingsville to Sandusky ferry goes clear across Lake Erie, not just the two Lake Michigan ones.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by north 42

The Kingsville to Sandusky ferry goes clear across Lake Erie, not just the two Lake Michigan ones.

looking into it, that's not a true cross-lake ferry route.

there is a ferry that goes from Sandusky, OH to Pelee Island in the middle of Lake Erie, and another ferry that goes from Kingsville, ON to Pelee Island from the opposite shore.

according to the internet, it is possible to transfer from one ferry to the other on Pelee Island, but the total travel time is 4 - 5 hours, depending on transfer time. google maps says that it only takes about 2 hours and 36 minutes to drive from Sandusky to Kingsville, so the double ferry route could not at all be considered a time-saver.

and the fare for two adults and a car to make the double ferry crossing would cost around $150, one-way. so nearly double the time and a fairly hefty cost makes this a somewhat impractical way to get across Lake Erie unless someone is interested in also exploring Pelee Island along their travels.


that said, Lake Erie is pretty long and narrow, i could see a more centrally located cross-lake ferry possibly working, say from Ashtabula, OH to Port Stanley, ON, or something like that. that drive is ~5 hours, but a modern catamaran style ferry like Lake Express could make the 56 mile crossing in just under 2 hours, which would be a significant time-savings.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ yeah, there are passenger and car ferries serving dozens of various islands throughout the great lakes region, but the only two ferries that go clear across a great lake, from one side to the other, are the two lake michigan ferries i posted about earlier.

there was another cross lake ferry from toronto to rochester across lake ontario about 15 years ago, but it didn't last very long.

____________


it would be cool if there was a chicago to new buffalo ferry, but i think chicago is simply located too close to the bottom of lake michigan to make a long-distance cross-lake ferry viable. 99.9% of people would just drive instead of paying a couple of hundred bucks for ferry tickets.

as i mentioned before, ferries only make sense when there isn't a viable land option. with chicago being located very close to the bottom of lake michigan, it's always gonna have a viable land option, thus obviating the need for ferries.

yes there has been talk about a cleveland to port stanley ferry off and on for years, but it never goes anywhere. part of the reason is there is nothing up there really and not enough reason for it.

a similar ferry service had operated from rochester to toronto, but i guess that failed. so that example sort of cools everything off when talk about a cle-can ferry pops back up from time to time.

in the meantime, there is also occasional summer ferry service to the lake erie islands from cleveland, lorain and i think other ohio cities that kind of comes and goes every few years.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

looking into it, that's not a true cross-lake ferry route.

there is a ferry that goes from Sandusky, OH to Pelee Island in the middle of Lake Erie, and another ferry that goes from Kingsville, ON to Pelee Island from the opposite shore.

according to the internet, it is possible to transfer from one ferry to the other on Pelee Island, but the total travel time is 4 - 5 hours, depending on transfer time. google maps says that it only takes about 2 hours and 36 minutes to drive from Sandusky to Kingsville, so the double ferry route could not at all be considered a time-saver.

and the fare for two adults and a car to make the double ferry crossing would cost around $150, one-way. so nearly double the time and a fairly hefty cost makes this a somewhat impractical way to get across Lake Erie unless someone is interested in also exploring Pelee Island along their travels.


that said, Lake Erie is pretty long and narrow, i could see a more centrally located cross-lake ferry possibly working, say from Ashtabula, OH to Port Stanley, ON, or something like that. that drive is ~5 hours, but a modern catamaran style ferry like Lake Express could make the 56 mile crossing in just under 2 hours, which would be a significant time-savings.

as i mentioned above there have been off and on plans for a cleveland to port stanley ferry for decades. it gets flurries of news for a time when someone brings it back up, but it never gets any traction. it may happen someday, perhaps when the northern coast is more built up and there is more of a reason. as i recall the last time they wanted to be able to move cars and big semi trucks, but that wasn't deemed to be profitable. reliability and subsidies are another concern. so anyway don't hold your breath.


also, we summered on pelee for like three summers when i was kid. between that and other trips i have spent about a year there, so that makes me an honorary canadian.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

a similar ferry service had operated from rochester to toronto, but i guess that failed. so that example sort of cools everything off when talk about a cle-can ferry pops back up from time to time.

yeah, i mentioned that shortlived toronto-rochester ferry on lake ontario.

it probably failed for the same reason that chicago doesn't have any cross-lake ferries: toronto is too close to the "end" of lake ontario. it's much too easy and affordable to simply drive around the end of the lake than to spend a boat load of money on a cross-lake ferry ticket.

lake michigan is the only great lake that seems able to sustain cross-lake ferries and that's probably because it's even longer than erie and ontario (and thus more time-consuming to drive around), and also no international border complications (lake michigan is the only great lake entirely within the US, the other 4 are all shared with canada).

additionally, the geography of the 5 lakes also allows for some strategic bridge opportunities that obviate the need for more cross-lake ferries: sault ste. marie, straits of mackinac, port huron/sarnia, detroit/windsor, and buffalo/niagara.

[suburbanite]

Michigan is also the only lake where crossing width-wise keeps you in the same country with large population centres on both sides. There's the unofficial 6th Great Lake of Georgian Bay, but no one needs to go from Tobermory to Parry Sounds frequently enough to warrant a ferry.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

There's the unofficial 6th Great Lake of Georgian Bay, but no one needs to go from Tobermory to Parry Sounds frequently enough to warrant a ferry.

oh yeah, georgian bay is big enough to be considered a major body of water all its own, and there is a ferry that goes from tobermoy at the northern tip of the bruce peninsula 30 miles across the water up to south barrymore on the southern end of manitoulin island (which is connected to the mainland via a series of bridges), so that could be seen as another type of cross-lake ferry.

[Steely Dan]

here's a cool image of the great lakes from space:


source: https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2017/0...ht-from-space/


for scale, toronto to chicago is ~435 miles, as the crow flies

that's similar to bos-wash (~395 miles) and SF-SD (~455 miles).