Political Buzz » ferries

Senate wants plan for moving ferry fares onto Good to Go

Jordan Schrader — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:13:43 +0000

A transportation spending plan proposed today by a bipartisan group of senators calls for the Department of Transportation to come up with a plan for moving state ferries onto the Good to Go program.

Under Good to Go, frequent toll payers prepay into an account and slap an electronic sticker on their cars for cashless toll payments. The idea is to study what it would take to move ferry payments, reservations and customer service onto the existing toll contract with Electronic Transaction Consultants Corp.

The study would cost $250,000 from a ferry fund and would be due to the Legislature …

Martinac dropped from ferry contract

Jordan Schrader — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 02:04:26 +0000

It looks like Washington’s next ferry won’t have Martinac’s fingerprints on it.

The state’s prime contractor building a new 144-car ferry, Vigor Industrial, terminated a subcontract with Tacoma-based J.M. Martinac Shipbuilding today. (Read the letter below.)

Vigor said Martinac refused to meet demands to lower its price to $14.8 million, which Vigor says is what it should cost to outfit the boat with heating and cooling systems and other finishing touches.

Instead, Martinac made a final offer to do the work at the cost of time and materials, without any profit for the company. It was a “creative …

Martinac sends counter-offer in attempt to keep ferry work

Jordan Schrader — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:18:15 +0000

J.M. Martinac Shipbuilding says it will work for no profit.

The Tacoma shipyard is a subcontractor to Vigor Industries on its $115 million contract to build Washington’s new 144-car ferry. It faced a Vigor-imposed deadline of today to lower its price or be dropped.

The company sent a letter Monday afternoon with a counter-offer: Martinac will work for the cost of time and materials. It won’t build in money to make a profit.

“We really won’t make anything on the job,” Martinac vice president Jonathan Platt said. Vigor, he said, “can manage the job. They can do everything. We just wanted …

Tacoma’s Martinac may be dropped from ferry contract

Jordan Schrader — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:20:41 +0000

Tacoma-based J.M. Martinac Shipbuilding Corp. expects to be dropped from the group of companies building Washington a $147 million ferry.

The Pierce County delegation in the Legislature is asking Gov. Chris Gregoire to intercede.

Gregoire helped negotiate an agreement between shipyards that made Seattle-based Todd Pacific Shipyards the main contractor on building Washington’s new 144-car ferries. The deal promised subcontractor work for Whidbey Island’s Nichols Brothers Boat Builders and for Martinac, which would outfit the boat with electrical, heating and cooling systems. The project was funded this year and the ferry is supposed to start hauling cars in 2014.

But Portland-based …

Who says there’s no free ride? You can take one on the returning Steilacoom II ferry on Saturday

Kris Sherman — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 21:42:11 +0000

After three years away at sea, Pierce County is welcoming the MV Steilacoom II back home.

And you can take a free ride – foot passengers only – at 9:50 a.m. Saturday.

There is one catch: The celebration is mostly for Anderson Island residents, so the trip begins there. If you’re a mainlander and you want take the cruise, you need to take the ferry from Steilacoom to get there. And you have to pay for that ride. The MV Christine Anderson is in regular service on the route.

The ride is part of the county’s special celebration of …

Transportation budget maintains status quo

Jordan Schrader — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:35:07 +0000

Projects scheduled last year will go on as scheduled. Little new work is being proposed.

That’s the bottom line from the rollout today of the Senate’s proposed transportation budget.

The budget’s $8.6 billion price tag includes a $1 billion increase from last year that reflects mainly federal money, including stimulus funds for high-speed rail, senators said.

Maintaining the status quo means less to disagree about. Two Republican and two Democratic members of the Senate Transportation Committee sat together at a news conference today to outline their bipartisan proposal.

Among the little new money proposed in the budget is …