(Monday afternoon photo by Anand Rajaratnam, before sold-out 4:45 run)
If you took – or tried to take – the Water Taxi home to West Seattle during Monday’s tanker-crash freeway shutdown, you know it was a hot ticket. How hot? We just checked with King County Department of Transportation’s Brent Champaco, who confirms that, as readers told us, the 4:45 and 5:15 runs sold out, and that overall: “The Water Taxi carried 1,200 riders on the evening West Seattle routes. For reference, the typical ridership number for an evening commute in February is 366.” Champaco says that by evening’s end, though, nobody was left behind: “Our crews were able to get everyone who was waiting for a trip to West Seattle onboard by the final scheduled run at 6:45 p.m. Big kudos to our crews.” Might not have worked out that way before January 2016, when the M/V Doc Maynard became West Seattle’s Water Taxi vessel, with capacity of 271, more than double its predecessor, the Spirit of Kingston (which the county has kept as a backup boat).
P.S. If you’re interested in the comparison, here’s our story with the early Water Taxi stats from last year’s tunneling-related Viaduct closure. (Of course, people had advance warning for that.)
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