FLOW ferry action group narrowing focus to restoring Sidney service

by Jeff Noedel
Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Just shy of its one-year birthday, San Juan County-based Ferry Lovers of Washington (FLOW) steered its rudder into a new direction last Friday, when its small steering committee agreed to whittle down its mission. FLOW will now focus its energies on holding Washington State Ferries and Washington State Government to their promise to restore the Sidney route in 2030 — or somehow standing up temporary passenger-only service to Sidney using a public-private model.

While FLOW participants have long respected and admired the WSF-community action model developed by the Vashon Island Chamber of Commerce, which contracts with a part-time staffer to coordinate local action, the chambers of commerce in the San Juans have not chosen to engage the problems with WSF in a way similar to Vashon.

At least two FLOW participants are expected to attend a Vashon-led summit of activists from ferry-served communities to be held on November 16 in Mukilteo.

“We have had some excellent FLOW meetings,” said FLOW Chair Tom Starr. “We’ve had a retired WSF captain and a retired WSF engineer visit with us to explain the inner workings of the San Juan routes. We’ve enjoyed visits from (County Council Chair) Jane Fuller and Sheriff Eric Peter. (Friday Harbor Town Administrator) Denice Kulseth has been a loyal supporter of our work. But between our meetings, we don’t seem to get nearly as much done as Vashon Island does, for lack of staff.”

The charter meeting of FLOW — held on Wednesday, October 11, 2023 — was attended by 10 people, including one woman who trekked here from Vashon Island. The group that decided to name itself FLOW was the brainchild of Fred Yocker, who assembled the group then immediately handed the gavel to Starr.

One of the original participants in FLOW (there are no memberships, officers, dues, or treasury) was Tom Bridge. Before Bridge was a co-leader of Orcas Island-based Community Water Taxi, he was a participant in FLOW.

FLOW has held more than a dozen meetings. In addition to Starr and Bridge, Laura Jo Severson, Brian Brown and this reporter have attended most meetings.

Severson’s efforts have been focused on standing-up an informal program that would house and feed stranded WSF passengers in Friday Harbor, if ever there is a repeat of the Memorial Day 2023 debacle in which 103 cars were stranded in Friday Harbor when the last boat to Anacortes was canceled unexpectedly. More than 200 visitors had no overnight access to food, water, or restrooms, as all hotel rooms and even the hostel were full, and no provisions were made to open public restrooms or provide any other services.

Severson, a highly experienced Red Cross organizer, wants to ensure that can never happen again. She is ready, on short notice, to open a shelter in Friday Harbor which would include cots, food and water. The sticking point for almost a year now is the need for a notification protocol in which WSF Dispatch or Customer Service would notify FLOW or preferably the County’s 911 system of any cancelation of the last trip from Friday Harbor to Anacortes. But after a year of lobbying, no such protocol has been set-up. WSF’s proposed solution (just read the public alerts) is absurdly impractical. A team of volunteers would be required to review every WSF alert 365 days a year well into each night. Meanwhile, WSF pays customer service workers to alert virtually around the clock. FLOW believes a phone call from WSF to the County’s 911 system, and then a call from 911 to FLOW is a reasonable lift for all involved to prevent the kind of suffering of June 2023. Lacking a sensible notification system from WSF to the County, or directly to FLOW, there is no assurance Severson will be notified in a timely manner if and when a situation similar to Memorial Day Sunday 2023 occurs.

Like Tom Bridge’s 750 passenger trips between the islands during WSF inter-island blackouts, Severson’s readiness to open an emergency shelter in Friday Harbor is the kind of humble local effort that backstops WSF when its service stumbles in the past year. “It’s the ‘island way,'” say the volunteers.

Governor Jay Inslee wisely granted San Juan County government $1 million to support local efforts to mitigate WSF problems in the San Juans. He granted an additional $500,000 to keep the inter-island service running on weekends throughout the Winter season, with the intention of making the inter-island route more attractive to WSF crews, and even rebuilding the number of captains, mates, engineers, and deckhands who choose to reside in San Juan County. (The County government would do well to ensure the availability of worker housing for potential WSF employees willing to relocate here.)

“Overall, we feel FLOW has succeeded in raising awareness and perhaps putting a little pressure in the right places,” said Starr. “Maybe in a small way, our work contributed indirectly to the Governor’s decision to grant the San Juans $1.5 million.

“After lackluster results in the legislative arena last year, the Council seems to have found its footing. The council showed some strong leadership this summer and got some good results. Now they’re talking about holding a summit of stakeholders, the same type of summit we’ve been talking about convening for months. We don’t need to have two local summits, so we will throw our support behind the County government. The County Council can be a unifying voice of all stakeholders. We hope they do that, and provide the staff necessary to approximate the powerful results Vashon Island continues to achieve. Vashon sets the bar high,” said Starr.

Tom Starr, 85, is a former San Juan County Commissioner. He — like Severson and Brown — has considerable experience in the working of government and commerce. He is active in the Lions Club and helps run the (band name). Starr recently told his FLOW friends he is stepping down as FLOW’s chair.

For now, Severson is willing to chair some meetings. The group, at minimum, wants to be the flickering flame under the dormant Anacortes-Friday Harbor-Sidney, B.C. route. WSF and state legislators have repeatedly promised to bring that route back to life in 2030.

The Sidney route is not just a asset to the regional tourism industry. Some people here have family on Vancouver Island. Locals miss the ability to hop over to the beautiful communities so close by; to visit Buschart Gardens, or have high tea at the Empress.

So FLOW will start doing more homework on the Sidney route. The year 2030 seems so far into the future. FLOW wonders if it can find a way to stand-up temporary walk-on service (maybe even direct into Victoria), now that a Governor has recognized local efforts here

They dare voice that hope knowing that creating a stand-in service on the Sidney route through a public-private partnership is a magnitude of order more complex than the complex San Juans inter-island service.

But they will try. Because they are ferry lovers in Washington.