The Kitsap Transit ferry M/V Finest near Bremerton in 2022. (Joe Mabel/ licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)
The local agency that operates passenger ferries between the Kitsap Peninsula and downtown Seattle will receive $13.5 million in federal funding to replace an older vessel with mechanical problems.
Kitsap Transit and U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell’s office announced the grant award this week and said the money would cover nearly 80% of the replacement ferry’s total cost.
“This funding allows us to buy a new boat to operate a route that has been running with a backup vessel – M/V Finest – that is older and has had to go out of service repeatedly for multiple issues,” the John Clauson, Kitsap Transit’s executive director said in a statement.
The new boat will serve the Kingston-Seattle route. Clauson noted Kitsap Transit suspended sailings on the route for five days in August because it didn’t have a working spare vessel.
Total cost for the ferry replacement is expected to be about $17.5 million. The agency doesn’t have the other $4 million for the project yet. Sanjay Bhatt, a spokesperson for the agency, explained that the Kitsap Transit Board of Commissioners would have to approve a future capital budget including the money, which would come from local sales tax revenue.
It isn’t known yet who will supply the boat. The agency needs to finalize vessel specifications and receive approval from its board to go out to bid on the project.
“We think it’s premature to speculate when a new Kingston/Seattle fast ferry will be delivered because there’s still a lot of work ahead,” Bhatt said.
Kitsap Transit has been using the Finest as a backup vessel on the Kingston-Seattle route. As of Thursday, it was operating on the route Monday through Saturday, on a summer sailing schedule because another boat, the Commander, is out of service for repairs.
The 349-passenger Finest was built in 1996 and refurbished by Kitsap Transit in 2018. The agency says the vessel’s hull and engines are near the end of their lifespan and that rehabbing the boat would cost $14 million to $17 million, on par with the price of a new ferry. Plans call for the new vessel to have diesel engines that produce less pollution than those on the Finest.
Kitsap Transit runs passenger ferries across Puget Sound from Bremerton, Kingston and Southworth to downtown Seattle. It has 10 boats, the second-largest ferry fleet in the state. The agency says its ferries carried about 1 million passengers in 2023, up from 794,896 in 2022.
Cantwell, a Democrat running for reelection this year, wrote Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in July, registering her support for Kitsap Transit’s application for the ferry grant funding, which comes from the Federal Transit Administration.
“As ridership on Kitsap Transit’s fast ferries soars, this new ferry will deliver the world-class service and reliability Washingtonians deserve,” Cantwell said in a statement this week.