West Seattle Water Taxi trouble: No service till 9 am

The West Seattle Water Taxi vessel Rachel Marie has had a “mechanical failure” and there’ll be no service on the run till 9 am, leaving downtown, according to an alert from King County Department of Transportation. They’ll be using the Melissa Ann, which is the Vashon-to-downtown boat.

eileen July 13, 2011 (7:54 am)

I’ve signed up for alerts and have not received one for this.Was one my way to try to make the 8:45 sailing from West seattle

WSB July 13, 2011 (8:00 am)

Eileen – I get the alerts too (as a backup in case there’s no media alert) and my cell did receive one at 7:35 am … they have also just (7:59 am) sent one for the people signed up for the shuttle-route Metro alerts … TR

KatherineL July 13, 2011 (8:17 am)

Seems like this ferry is always breaking down.

asteria July 13, 2011 (8:29 am)

I got the email alert at 7:18am – also please fix the time in the body, should say restarting at 9am not 9 pm.

Jasperblu July 13, 2011 (8:47 am)

I have to agree, it DOES seem like the water taxi breaks down fairly often. Then again, it’s a boat. And if I remember anything about my friends with boats, it’s that they require a lot of maintenance over time. It really complicates my being able to rely on the water taxi for daily commuting. Which is a real shame. I’d so love to rely on it vs. getting out of WS via roadways. :(

HT July 13, 2011 (9:09 am)

Argossy used to pull another boat into service when there was an issue like this. Argossy was far better suited to run this operation than KC.

stephanie July 13, 2011 (9:28 am)

thanks for the update–glad to know that [hopefully] it will be up and running this afternoon. bummer that the taxi was down this morning, but on the plus side, it prompted an extended a.m. bike ride to work!

JD July 13, 2011 (11:21 am)

Sounds like they could use the money more than the Bus Service

Eric July 13, 2011 (2:37 pm)

It was having engine trouble this morning. Large cloud of smoke on the way over and the engine wasn’t able to run at any substantial RPM without smoking on the one morning run to downtown (before they pulled it). I wouldn’t bet a lot on it being up and running this evening…