King County Water Taxi proposes 50-cent fare hike – for some

January 12, 2010 at 5:01 pm | In King County Water Taxi, Transportation, West Seattle news | 8 Comments

If the King County Ferry District Board – aka King County Council – says yes, the KC Water Taxi‘s West Seattle run will charge 50 cents more for adult passengers who pay cash, starting this spring. A new fare schedule is up for a public hearing when the board meets January 25th – including Seattle-Vashon Water Taxi fares:

Reasons cited for the rate increase – which would be the first in three-plus years – include wanting to encourage transit-pass use. The meeting on January 25 is at 1:30 pm in County Council chambers at the County Courthouse downtown; you can read related documents by following links from this page on the Ferry District website. Next Water Taxi season is scheduled to start April 4; work is under way at Seacrest right now to improve its dock in hopes of year-round operation, which will require additional funding that the county’s hoping will be worked out this summer. P.S. We just asked spokesperson Kris Faucett if there’s been a decision on which boat the county will lease for the new season (since Argosy is no longer running the service) – she says there should be news about that “soon.”

8 Comments

  1. Wasn’t the Orca fare just $1.75 this past season; just like using a pass? That’s a bug jump then!

    Comment by Mike D. — 5:47 pm January 12, 2010 #

  2. There’s a comparison of current vs. proposed fares on this fact sheet: http://www.kingcountyferries.org/pdfs/Fare%20policy%20comprehensive%20fact%20sheet%20011110_FINAL.pdf

    Comment by Clark — 5:54 pm January 12, 2010 #

  3. Even if they applied the rate hike to the card I still think it’s a great value compared with alternative modes of transportation/parking. I plan on using it more this year.

    Comment by the dude — 6:12 pm January 12, 2010 #

  4. It would be very cool if Someone could provide coin machines by the Water Taxi docks. The exact change only policy for the Water Taxi leads to a lot of unprepared passengers having to shell out a little extra money every trip. It can be a bit of a drama. Its easy to come up with paper dollars, but sometimes people don’t have a bunch of quarters.

    Comment by Living in West Seattle since 1985 — 6:45 pm January 12, 2010 #

  5. Is the fare for roundtrip passage as it is on the Washington State Ferries? (or at least that’s how I recall it working for WA State Ferries).

    Comment by lulu — 6:59 pm January 12, 2010 #

  6. I thought we voted a levy to cover this service.

    Where did all that money go?

    Comment by old timer — 7:17 pm January 12, 2010 #

  7. I’m a little confused about passes. In the past, if you had a Puget Pass of any $ amount, you got on the ferry without paying anything else. So you could have a 50 cent pass and pay nothing extra. But now that my Puget Pass is loaded on Orca, it looks as if they’re wanting us to pay the full fare with pass and/or epurse,and not just get the “free” ride with the pass. Is that correct?

    Comment by Sue — 7:22 pm January 12, 2010 #

  8. To Sue: The Orca card has two functions, it can be used as a pass like the previous pugetpass or as an “e-purse”, which is basically like a debit card.

    The pass function is like a puget pass, you load a pass of $ value (say 2.25) and any trip that is 2.25 will be free when you tap the pass.

    The “e-purse” is for less frequent riders and it functions like a debit card. You pre-load say $10 an everytime you board a bus, it debits the account for $2.25 and it also permits you to transfer to any other bus for two hours.

    Hopefully this clears things up.

    Comment by Anonymous — 1:26 pm January 18, 2010 #

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