EDMONDS, Wash. — Officials at Washington State Ferries are preparing for a busy weekend as travelers visit family and friends via ferry. They are encouraging riders to check schedules before leaving and sign up for rider alerts.
"A lot of people trying to get out of town, visiting relatives or friends, and we're here to help do that," Ian Sterling of WSF said. "But this may not be the ferry service they recall from holidays past, especially pre-COVID. A couple of big challenges happening right now around staffing and finding enough crew to actually operate the boats, so we're hiring as fast as we can."
Sterling said they've been able to restore near-normal service to some routes, but on others they're still down to one boat rather than two -- meaning they have half their typical capacity.
"So there's a wait in summer-like lines, especially if you travel when everybody else is traveling this weekend," Sterling said.
He said the busiest routes are expected to be the core Puget Sound routes such as Seattle-Bremerton, Seattle-Bainbridge, Mukilteo-Clinton and Edmonds-Kingston. They're also monitoring the weekend's weather; while the ferry travel itself isn't likely to be impacted, if roads are covered in snow it could impact crew worker travel to terminals.
His best advice is to download the WSDOT app, and check schedules before heading to the terminal.
"You can look at all the real-time information coming out of terminals, so check the traffic cameras, that type of thing, I would definitely be doing that kind of thing if I was traveling this weekend, in particular, if it snows and you're headed for a state ferry," Sterling said.