The 13,000 constituents of Central Elgin, the Ontario municipality that includes Port Stanley and now owns the harbor there, have had many opportunities — including a municipal election last year — to define the principles now being followed by its municipal officials: Port Stanley harbor under municipal ownership is for tourism and small fishing, not shipping. Paying for regular dredging costs too much. So passengers, especially tourists, are good. Shallow-draft vessels are good. Trucks are unacceptable. These are the non-negotiable conditions that Central Elgin baked into its agreement with Cleveland and their joint Request for Expressions of Interest from prospective ferry operators.
But we’ve never had such a public discussion on this side of the water. Ever since the City of Cleveland asked the Port to look into the possibility of an Ontario ferry, way back in the Campbell Administration, the research, planning and decision-making for the “Trans-Erie Ferry” project have been closely held within that agency’s walls. Aside from the agency reviews needed to apply for a 2006 Federal grant to build a ferry terminal, I don’t believe the Port has ever formally engaged any other public partners in the nine years since it first put ferry service on its agenda… and it has certainly never asked the public at large to review or contribute to its plans.
Now would be a very good time to correct this oversight.
Port CEO Will Friedman has displayed great common sense and practical diplomatic skill in the way he’s brought the ferry project back from the dead, re-envisioned as a modest, collaborative international experiment. He’s also shown a refreshing willingness to open the Port’s doors and engage with the City, the County and the public on other important concerns.
So… how about inviting the northeast Ohio public in to talk about this experiment, and the possibilities we’d like to see tried and tested in the coming “pilot project”?
This should be easy. The Port could simply publish its two or three ferry proposals on its website — redacted for trade secrets if necessary, though I assume the operators who submitted them expected them to be public. (Of course that should happen anyway.) Then it could let the public submit comments and questions, and post them too. Finally the Port staff could hold a couple of straightforward public comment hearings. The whole thing might take a month, even while the staff is conducting other parts of its review.
At worst, this process would oblige the Port staff to endure some low-voltage discussion. At best, it would spark genuine public interest and engagement — which can only help the ferry project, not to0 mention the Port, in the long run — and give the Port staff some fresh perspectives, questions and ideas. Little cost, low downside risk, significant upside potential. What’s not to like?
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Without the benefit of reading the proposals the Port has received, here are some perspectives I’d like to see included as the Port of Cleveland and Central Elgin define the terms of our ferry experiment:
1) Think basic transportation. Making a ferry attractive to tourists is a self-evident priority. But let’s not forget that a fast passenger ferry can also provide the first convenient, routine transportation link between two significant urban economies. No, not Cleveland and Toronto. Cleveland and London.
London, Ontario is a city of more than 350,000 in a metro region of nearly 500,000. Both city and region are growing. It’s a regional financial center, an insurance industry center, a manufacturing center, a medical research center, the site of a major university. As the crow flies it’s just 105 miles from Cleveland — closer than Pittsburgh or Columbus. But the only ways for a Clevelander to get there (or a Londoner to get here) are a five to six hour drive through Detroit or Buffalo, or a $335-$475 one-way airplane ticket through Toronto or Detroit.
A fast ferry can help fix that — at the right speed, at the right price, with a reliable, convenient way to travel the last 35 miles from Port Stanley to downtown London. It can open new possibilities and connections; for entrepreneurs, professionals and salespeople, for doctors and patients, for professors, researchers and students, for other opportunity-seekers in both communities. The ferry plan should try to maximize that impact.
2) Think affordable access. A ferry like Milwaukee’s Lake Express that costs a single, round-trip passenger without a car $166 — or $196 with a bicycle, or $370 with a car — will have limited utility for most northeast Ohio residents, and probably for business travelers as well. Our ferry experiment needs to be based on much lower target fares... which of course means lower operating expenses. Otherwise, most of its potential value will be wasted.
Therefore…
3) Don’t get hung up on cars and buses. Friedman and other Port officials have been talking about ferrying passengers, cars and maybe tour buses. This sounds like common sense, but it ain’t necessarily so. Adding vehicle capacity to a passenger ferry makes it much bigger, heavier, more expensive to build, more expensive to operate, harder to operate in shallow water, etc. It’s difficult to keep vehicle fares reasonable without cross-subsidy from passengers (e.g. on the Lake Express, a three-ton car that takes up about sixty square feet of deck space pays the same fare as a 150-pound person whose seat occupies about ten square feet.)
Instead of maximizing the convenience of traveling with our own vehicles, perhaps the Cleveland-Port Stanley experiment could focus on maximizing other dockside transportation options: public transportation, limousines and taxis, rental vehicles, bikes, etc. At the Cleveland end this would pose few problems. Destinations like the Rock Hall, professional sports sites, new convention center, downtown hotels, etc. are within a short walk or taxi ride, and there’s an underused RTA Blue Line station right up the hill. For Port Stanley, 35 miles from downtown London with no public transportation, it would be more challenging — perhaps involving motorcoaches, car rental facilities, and the like. But of course this would create business opportunities for Ontarians (including, I hope, tour operators — why in heaven’s name would you want to ship U.S. tour buses to Canada, or vice versa?)
Which brings me to point 4…
4) Conceive the ferry experiment as part of a complete transportation plan. I’m sure many people from the U.S. side will want to end their ferry rides in Port Stanley. But many more will be looking for a fast, affordable, and/or relaxing way to get to universities, hospitals, companies or events in London, or to nearby Stratford, or to Kitchener-Waterloo (”Ontario’s Silicon Valley”). Or, of course, to Toronto. Or to the nearest ViaRail station to catch a train to anywhere in Canada. A meaningful ferry pilot project must either require every non-Port Stanley passenger to bring a car (at great expense, see point 3) or come up with easy, affordable ways for passengers to make those connections.
Again, this is a smaller concern on the Cleveland end, but still a concern. The ferry landing here needs to be situated for maximum ease of access to walkable destinations like the Rock Hall, to RTA, and to taxi and limousine services. For my money that’s a dock in the Inner Harbor, not over in the Port’s commercial wharfs. But in any event the Port and Central Elgin leaders need to take Cleveland’s dockside transportation connections seriously.
Which leads me to point 5…
5) Public operating subsidies should not be off the table. The surest way to kill any new community initiative is to assume it must be private, and then insist that the operator’s business plan be self-funding immediately or in very short order. In Friedman’s recent Sound of Ideas interview, he pointed out that a ferry that delivers tourists would be a legitimate object for Positively Cleveland support. I agree with this but would add: The proposed ferry is a new basic transportation facility between two important urban centers, where no such facility now exists. (See point 1.) If it we were talking about a new highway to accomplish the same purpose, would anyone assume it could or should be built without public support?
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That’s my perspective, speaking for nobody but myself.
In a county of 1.28 million people, the Port could probably find a at least few other citizens with their own perspectives on this experimental project — what we should be trying to test, what we should be trying to learn.
Before the Port and its partner finish analyzing their proposals and start signing agreements, how about taking some time to listen?
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