NYC Ferry’s pier walkways are on the fritz daily and often more than that, leading to routine service suspensions, a source with internal knowledge of the heavily-subsidized maritime transit system told amNewYork Metro.
“Every day, sometimes it’s multiple times a day,” said the source of the pathway malfunctions.
Each ferry pier has two electrically-retractable ramps allowing vessels to dock even when one isn’t working. Crews can often fix them within a couple of hours, but other times they can be out for longer.
“[There are] landings where there’s a ramp out for multiple weeks or multiple months in certain cases,” the source said. “Then you’re only one ramp away from not being able to use the landing.”
The source requested anonymity to speak freely about the ferry’s issues that have not been published.
Such has been the case at the Astoria stop in Queens, where one of the ramps was out for weeks and the pier had to shut down 10 times last month.
The E. 34th Street stop in Manhattan has had one of its barge piers out since September, but there are two other barges that provide enough capacity for reduced winter schedules, according to officials.
However, on Wednesday afternoon, amNewYork Metro observed a vessel being forced to wait to berth because all other landings were occupied by ferries.
The heavily-subsidized ferry system is overseen by the city’s business-boosting arm the Economic Development Corporation, and operated by private company Hornblower.
A pet project of the former Mayor Bill de Blasio administration, it has struggled with routine closures and amNewYork Metro previously revealed that docks were down every four days over the past six months.
That’s on top of the privately-owned Greenpoint stop in Brooklyn, which has been out of commission since May and won’t be fully repaired until at late June, according to its owner Lendlease.
The ramps can be manually cranked down if the power is out, but there have to be crews on land to do so since it’s unsafe for them to hop off the boats.
The source chalked up the frequent outages to ramps freezing during the cold weather, other mechanical issues, and the piers losing power.
“I think the nature of this being outdoor equipment, it’s freezing, and some mornings there’s a ramp that is frozen, so it might take a little coercion to get it working,” they said.
Power outages can cause major snags for the ferry as well, as was the case recently when the system’s busiest stop, Wall Street/Pier 11, was out for the entire weekend, forcing almost every route to detour.
The stop lost power from Con Edison on Thursday, Feb. 3 and switched to a generator, which then broke Saturday morning forcing the utility to set up a second generator, according to EDC spokesman Brian Zumhagen.
During that time, the ramps at the Sunset Park stop in Brooklyn also failed, leading the ferry to cancel its runs to the Rockaways entirely.
They restored power to the Lower Manhattan boat terminal by Sunday evening, allowing the ferries to resume full service for the Monday morning commute, according the EDC rep, who did not dispute the source’s claims.
“NYC Ferry is a major, highly reliable public transit system serving New Yorkers 365 days a year. In 2021, over 99% of trips were completed as scheduled at all stops,” said Zumhagen in a statement. “This weekend’s outage at Wall Street/Pier 11 has been resolved by Con Ed, and the recent issues in Astoria are being diagnosed.”
