(Draft version of the poster you’ll see promoting advance ticket purchases)

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Washington State Ferries is going ahead with the changes it tried at the Fauntleroy dock for four days last month, after presenting the test results it to its Triangle Route Task Force.

The pilot project might not have looked or felt different to individual ferry users. But in the big picture, a big difference was made, WSF said.

The task force, meeting Tuesday at Fauntleroy Church, also heard even bigger news: WSF expects to start selling tickets by phone before month’s end.

A guest as the meeting began was State Sen. Sharon Nelson, introduced by WSF’s government-affairs liaison John Vezina as representing “two-thirds of the Triangle route.” She gave the committee members a general message of support.

She began by saying that WSF’s work with legislators had become so much more collaborative in recent years, and that she thought putting together a task force about this route “made so much sense.” She talked about the diverse ridership and promised “I will support you every which way I can … I know there’ll be hiccups. … We’re in this together. … We’ll see how the implementation goes.”

She left “to catch the 5:10.”

Vezina then gave the committee a lay-of-the-land primer on the Legislature and how it works, including the state-budget process.

“In most states the Legislature meets every spring to do the budget … Washington decided … to go to a biennial budget,” meeting in January after an election year. Vezina explained the supplemental budget that covers unanticipated needs, in a “much shorter” session.

This year’s transportation budget did get passed on time, by the end of April, he explained. That included the supplemental requests from WSF. He noted that the rest of the ongoing budget battle means that if there’s no state operating budget by July 1st, “folks aren’t going to go to work” – WSF is not affected, though, because its budget was passed.

The Colman Dock project starts soon, he noted. He said WSF had to prioritize – not that it doesn’t need another new vessel, for example, but Colman Dock was a higher priority. “One of the hardest things in my job, especially working with the Ferry Advisory Committees … unless something is in the governor’s budget, I can’t talk to legislators about it.”

Why does all this matter? he was asked, given that the committee is not currently considering anything that would require a budget request. In the future, it might, Vezina said: “So, as you all think about things (that might require legislative action) – if there was legislation that you wanted to have introduced that was non-fiscal … we could take it to Sen. Nelson. If there were budget considerations – for next January, we’re already getting the budget instructions, and this summer we’ll be putting the budget together.” The briefing also explained how the WSF budget breaks out – the Capital Program and Operating Program. Capital assets include the aforementioned Colman Dock project and new vessels; Operating includes the money to run everything.

One committee member suggested it would be important to have money budgeted for the police officer who helps direct traffic during peak times at Fauntleroy (a Seattle Police officer, Vezina noted, but not funded by the city).

Another question: How is the route’s performance measured? John said there are 17 standards. Those were hashed out by an ad-hoc committee in 2011. But, he noted, there’s no penalty mentioned if a standard (such as on-time performance) isn’t met. (Task force members requested the list of standards.)

Next: The recap of the recent four-day test of changes aimed at speeding up vehicle processing at Fauntleroy and alleviating backups that increasingly stretch far beyond Fauntleroy. (Added: Here’s the slide deck, followed by our notes from the presentation.)

Metrics:

They wanted to get more vehicles through at peak time.

Average vehicles processed per minute:

Baseline (pre-test) 4.2
Plot 4.1

“We broke even” by getting rid of two scanning points, said WSF’s Brian Mannion. But while that might not sound like an improvement, this was the big revelation:

Average vehicles moved at peak time:

639 baseline
725 pilot

“That’s huge,” a task-force member murmured.

The “bad day” during the four-day test was Wednesday, May 17th. (That was later described as staffers trying to “over-use” the signs at the dock showing who could use tollbooths – one destination, the other, or both.)

WSF director of operations Greg Faust said things were going better on Tuesday, but Wednesday brought “a bit of a mental hiccup … we overthought some things … plus there was some weird traffic,” opera on Vashon. “The team really did regroup,” with members staying up late Wednesday night to figure out what went wrong so they wouldn’t repeat it on Thursday. What they focused on, he said, was how to use an area on the east side of the tollbooths “most effectively,” staging 10 to 12 cars that were Southworth-bound, even as they were processing the Vashon-only boat.

Mannion then summarized, “So we weren’t moving cars at a faster clip, but we were moving more cars,” and that seemed to do with dock usage. Active dock loading per day took 169 minutes in the pilot, 150 in the pre-test baseline. Slow, consistent movement toward the terminal went over well with some and not with others who were accustomed to moving in bursts, he continued. The wait won’t be eliminated, and empty spaces on departing boats won’t be, either, he warned. Faust said there was one sailing in the 3 pm vicinity where they did reduce the number of empty spaces, though “you’re not going to fill that boat” ever, in his view.

WSF received very few official “public comments” on the test; those that did come in were focused on “bypass and pre-ticketing.” They cannot officially monitor social media but said they had heard there was a lot of discussion there. One task-force member said some groups’ negative opinions made him really mad. One person, for example, griped about wasting gas inching from The Kenney to dock – but that’s a sign of this working, according to the WSF explanation.

Mannion pointed out the difference between what you see behind the wheel and what they see evaluating the big picture. In the car, all you see is the cars in front of you. Another committee member said she heard people saying they didn’t see a difference, “so (the car-count change) would be a really important statistic to get out there.”

Another said it’s vital to encourage people to pre-purchase tickets, and if they don’t see that it’s making a difference, “they won’t.”

Aditional findings, per slide deck:

*Single lane on Fauntleroy Way is major constraint (“single lane creates a ‘plug’ that prevents vehicles from getting to dock”)

*Active management of dock and queue helps (“two ways to manage problem – go get cars, bring cars to you”) – “splitter relieves officer to go get more vehicles …keeps tollbooths clear to process vehicles pulled out of line” … in bring cars to us, splitter and spd provide info to dock director about queue … dock director assigns lanes to keep que moving and get more cars to tollbooth

*Bypass lane remains unviable – it’s unsafe – also, limited availability when boat is not unloaing, vehicles are available, there is room on dock

WSF’s Hadley Rodero, moderating the meeting, asked task-force members again to help monitor social-media groups and discussion since they can’t.

A group member thought a public meeting might be a good solution.

Faust said they managed the higher overall throughput even though they had to back some people up to the tollbooth – if they failed to stop there as expected – throughout the pilot project. Some staffers were acting as “human stop signs,” he said.

Mannion said they’re thinking about daily messaging to alert people to what’s ahead and letting them know what they found.

Task force members repeated that WSF needs to “sell” the changes better.

Another meeting attendee who said he’s a 7-year Vashon resident said the week before the experiment seemed light traffic, and the week of was heavier. Also, he talked about anecdotal evidence of the boats leaving “half-empty.” “That was my perception, and I’m one of the complainers on Facebook.”

WHAT’S NEXT:

WSF wants to resume the procedure changes the week before summer schedule, to train folks to stop at the tollbooth. So they want to start it on June 19th. And they want to then monitor 30 days of data. They need extra staffers, such as the “splitter” position. It’ll be something of a “month-long training opportunity.” Familiarity and training will bring performance improvements, they believe. New process also “creates some additional capacity for staff, frees up scanner to be flagger.”

They’ll have data for July 12th meeting, which is a site visit at 4 pm at the terminal.

Again, one member told them that a community meeting would be “bigger bang for the buck” rather than scattered media reports. Another said that a meeting with 10 or 20 griping people would not do as much as getting out lots of messaging everywhere they can. WSF staffers did not rule out a community forum at some point.

An attendee suggested that handing out flyers at tollbooths to every single vehicle would be big. Postings on the boats, too, but Vashon riders don’t necessarily get out of their cars, it was noted.

That’s when another big headline emerged: Faust revealed that the IT department is “close to launch” of ticketing by phone. You’ll still have to stop at the tollbooth for processing, and the ticketing will still be done via the WSF website – “which is terrible,” Mannion lamented – but they’re hoping this will roll out June 25th.

The task force’s next meeting is at the Fauntleroy dock, 4 pm July 12th, to see how things are going.
Then in their second phase of work later this year, they’ll be looking at issues such as:

*Fill the boat?

*Ticketing/vehicle processing options

*Schedule improvement and current usage patterns (a Southworth rep talked about the schedule not working for getting people over here in the morning – leaving the house 5:30 to get to work by 8:30 – no direct route SW to Fauntleroy – only about 200 cars can cross during morning commute)

Learn financial constraints

Skilled personnel/labor

Revenue

In January 2019 the route will have three 124-car vessels.

Task-force members were asked to think about those things and let WSF know what they would like to tackle next. Meantime, watch for the Fauntleroy processing changes to resume June 19th.