Update: West Seattle Water Taxi out of service for today/tonight

ORIGINAL 12:41 PM REPORT: Thanks to JayDee for the tip, confirmed by King County Department of Transportation: The West Seattle Water Taxi isn’t running right now, because of “mechanical problems.” KCDOT’s Rochelle Ogershok says there’s no word yet how soon they’ll be able to resume service. The West Seattle Water Taxi has been running on weekends with the Melissa Ann, which serves Vashon on weekdays, since the crash that idled its regular vessel Rachel Marie three weeks ago, while Argosy’s Sightseer has handled weekday runs. We’ll be monitoring this, but if you want to directly check the Melissa Ann’s status, you can use this “live” map with marine-traffic ID, which currently shows it still docked at Pier 50 downtown.

2:24 PM UPDATE: KCDOT has just announced that the West Seattle Water Taxi is canceled for the rest of today/tonight. They’re still saying “mechanical problems.”

10:24 PM UPDATE: In case you’re wondering, the county still has not announced whether there will or won’t be Water Taxi service tomorrow (keep an eye on this page).

JayDee October 16, 2010 (1:57 pm)

Yep, I was gonna hazard downtown traffic and ride to the U-District and Sand Point, but the WT was nowhere in site. They did post an employee at Seacrest to let everyone know. He mentioned that it was a problem with the electronics (A processor) that was not responding. He said the Coast Guard would not let them operate the vessel until it cooperated.

So I did my shopping in West Seattle instead. It sure is a nice (but nippy) day out there.

WSB October 16, 2010 (2:31 pm)

Thanks again for the heads-up. They hadn’t issued a news release – just an alert to the e-mail alert list – which we have now joined (we were on it for various Metro bus routes but did not realize they had KCWT alerts too). And now it’s canceled for the rest of the day. Glad to hear they had someone at Seacrest getting the word out – we have had to go to a variety of other stories and I hadn’t made it there yet. – TR

Noelle October 16, 2010 (2:47 pm)

Awww Bad timing with the Viaduct closed and all. I wonder why they are not bringing in the old water taxi? At least its a beautiful day out!

Mark October 16, 2010 (4:39 pm)

I think it’s time to look at renewing the contract with Argosy to operate the water taxi. They ran it for years with few disruptions. And for a bargain cost to us taxpayers.