Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 233
With the rusty Matanuska out of service pending repairs, the Kennicott scheduled for tie-up due to lack of crew and the Tazlina in the shipyard to add crew quarters, the state ferry system’s draft summer 2024 schedule is limited by the number of vessels in service and looks about the same as this past summer. The Columbia would make a weekly northbound stop in Wrangell on Sundays and a weekly southbound visit on Wednesdays on its run between Bellingham, Washington, and Southeast Alaska. The marine highway system released its draft schedule D...
The state ferry system has hired more crew members than have left the agency over the past four months, Marine Director Craig Tornga told a public advisory board on Friday, Dec. 1, a rarity for the system which has been plagued by a net outflow of workers. If the hiring gain continues, the Alaska Marine Highway System may be able to run both of its largest ships, the Columbia and Kennicott, next summer, which could allow for restoration of cross-Gulf routes and maybe even bringing back service to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. The ferry...
The 50-year-old state ferry Columbia has been pulled from service, with the Alaska Marine Highway System reporting repairs is expected to take a week. The problem is in the steering system, Sam Dapcevich, spokesman for the Alaska Department of Transportation, told the Ketchikan Daily News on Friday, Oct. 27. “It’s going to require a fairly extensive repair that’s going to take place down in Bellingham, (Washington),” Dapcevich said. The Columbia left Southeast Alaska on its regular southbound sailing Monday, Oct. 30, heading from Ketchik...
For the next week, Alaskans have a chance to register their opinions on the future of the state ferry system through an online survey that will be used to help create a long-range plan. The survey responses will be used over the next year to craft the “2045 Long-Range Plan” for the Alaska Marine Highway System, intended to establish its goals for service levels and operations beyond the more reactive, short-term decisions that have guided the system in recent years. AMHS General Manager Craig Tornga opened an Oct. 24 public meeting by des...
We’re all happy to have the administration’s winter schedule for the Southeast ferry system. However, there are a few downsides. The first is the exception noted in the Columbia’s schedule, which leaves several communities without service in November and December. It’s clear that the Alaska Marine Highway System has had a difficult time weathering the storms of the pandemic which resulted in a substantial decline in revenue as well as adequate crew availability. It’s unfortunate that the ferry system does not have an operational vessel in...
The state wants to send the Matanuska, the oldest vessel in the Alaska Marine Highway System fleet, into a shipyard for the equivalent of a full-body scan. Management wants to find out just how much of the ship’s steel has rusted, and how far the rust has eaten into the thickness of the metal. The 60-year-old Matanuska has been tied up at the dock in Ketchikan since last November, waiting for the state to decide whether to repair the vessel and restore it to working order, or give up on the ship. “We know we have bad steel,” Craig Torng...
A year after an effort that failed to attract any bidders, the state is again looking to hire a shipyard to build a replacement for the ferry Tustumena. Design work is still not complete, however. The new ferry, which will mostly serve Gulf of Alaska communities, is expected to cost almost $325 million, with the federal government picking up much of the cost. It would give Alaska its first new mainline ferry in decades. In a meeting with the Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board on Aug. 25,...
A board appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy has decided in favor of a new state regulation that would ban transgender girls from participation in high school girls sports. The decision by the state board of education on Thursday, Aug. 31, came less than six months after the board passed a resolution indicating its members were interested in such a policy. All seven Dunleavy-appointed board members voted in favor of the new policy, which says that only girls whose sex assigned at birth is female will be able to participate in girls sports. The only...
Age is a major issue behind the Alaska Marine Highway System’s pending master plan, which will go to state legislators this month. The state ferry Columbia, which turns 50 next year, had been sidelined at the Ketchikan ferry dock for about three years until February. Management’s decision to park the vessel was based on the large expense of operating the ship, the costliest of any ferry in the fleet. Things changed when it was discovered that the 60-year-old Matanuska, which had suffered a series of maintenance setbacks, had more serious iss...
The state needs a new mainline ferry more than ever. The Alaska Marine Highway System is running out of operable ships, further driving away travelers. The scarcity of service makes it hard on locals and even harder on summer visitors, who find the skimpy schedule and undependable service a reason not to bring their RV or camper to Southeast. The 50-year-old Columbia and 60-year-old Matanuska are about as shipshape as could be expected for their age, which is to say both are in regular need of medical attention and at constant risk of...
Alaska’s state school board has unexpectedly delayed a vote on a proposed regulation that would prohibit transgender girls from playing on girls high school sports teams. Board chairman James Fields said the delay was warranted by “hard questions” about whether the regulation could violate students’ right to privacy, among other legal issues. “I’d be in favor of a special meeting and allowing us to show the public and show our constituents that we’re not just doing this to quickly rush through it. We want to take a good long look at all of the...
Wrangell will go without any southbound ferry service in alternating weeks from Oct. 1 to mid-November under the Alaska Marine Highway System’s draft fall/winter schedule. The town is on the schedule for its usual weekly northbound stop during that period. The rest of the winter schedule shows once-a-week service to town in each direction, with the bonus of two stops in each direction the second week of each month from mid-November through February when the Kennicott will shorten its Southeast route and not go to Bellingham, Washington. The f...
The Alaska Marine Highway System, which five months ago embarked on improving its hiring process to address chronic crew shortages, is unable to say how many new employees it has hired since then. The push started after a consultant’s report in January determined the state had hired just four out of 250 job applicants over the prior 12 months. The crew shortage forced the state to pull the Kennicott, the second-largest operable ship in the fleet, off this summer’s schedule and keep it tied up at the dock in Ketchikan. Asked how many new emp...
A federal grant of nearly $3 million over five years will enable Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage to vastly expand its nursing-education programs, the university announced. The grant, from the U.S. Department of Labor, was one of 25 given to public-private partnerships across the nation to expand nursing training, APU said. While the entire nation is struggling with nursing shortages, Alaska’s situation is particularly dire. A 2022 report by the Alaska Hospital and Healthcare Association found that Alaska has the nation’s lowest pre...
The Hubbard pulled away from the dock at the Ketchikan Shipyard on May 18, headed for its first passenger sailing — more than four years after it was built at a cost of about $60 million. Carrying a crew of 24 — with newly installed sleeping quarters for crew — the Hubbard headed to Juneau, where it was scheduled to start work Tuesday, running six days a week between the Capital City and the Lynn Canal communities of Haines and Skagway. The Hubbard is not scheduled to visit Wrangell this summer. With the Matanuska out of service for repai...
The Legislature passed a bill Friday extending Medicaid coverage from two months to 12 months for a couple thousand new mothers a year. Senate Bill 58, proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, is intended to prevent gaps in health care coverage and to address the state’s high and rising maternal mortality rate. State Department of Health officials told lawmakers that 51% of births in Alaska are covered by Medicaid; those new mothers would benefit from the legislation. The Senate passed the final bill 19-1 on Friday. The House passed the legislation f...
Ketchikan, her close community neighbors and all of Southeast Alaska are in danger. We are at risk of losing our Alaska Marine Highway System ferry run to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, permanently. Ferry service to Prince Rupert is vital. It is the only way we can reach the mainland quickly at a reasonable cost. Prince Rupert is less than a seven-hour trip from Ketchikan versus a 44-hour trip to Bellingham, Washington. The one-way fare to Prince Rupert is approximately $400 for a Subaru, driver, one passenger and a dog, while the fare for...
The state now plans to spend an estimated $8 million to replace wasted steel on the ferry Matanuska. If the repairs can be completed in time, the ship could be available by late summer or early fall if it is needed to fill in on Southeast routes. The work at the Vigor shipyard in Ketchikan had not started as of March 28, although the Alaska Marine Highway System’s timeline presented to legislators that day showed the Matanuska work was to have started in March. A much larger, $37.5 million project of safety and environmental upgrades to the 6...
The Alaska Marine Highway System is short more than 100 new crew to safely and dependably put the Kennicott to sea. Without enough onboard workers, the state ferry system will start the summer schedule in six weeks with its second-largest operable ship tied up for lack of crew. Though management has said they could put the Kennicott into service if they can hire enough new employees, filling all the vacancies would represent more than a 20% gain in current ferry system crew numbers, setting a very high hurdle to untie the ship this summer. The...
In an unannounced move, the State Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution March 14 that urges the Alaska Department of Education to limit the participation of transgender girls in girls school sports. The resolution, which is non-binding, encourages the department to adopt a policy that would ban transgender girls from competing alongside girls who are cisgender — meaning their gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth — in school sports. The resolution asks the department to create two sports divisions: one exc...
Just eight weeks before the start of the summer timetable on May 1, the Alaska Marine Highway System released its schedule and opened its online reservations system for bookings. The schedule, which was announced March 7, came later than usual this year as the state continues to wrestle with crew shortages that will keep a couple of ships tied to the dock for the summer. Wrangell will see a weekly ferry stop in each direction May through September. “The Kennicott and Tazlina will be off-line for the time being due to skilled crew shortages, b...
Zach Taylor of Muddy Water Adventures is a self-described "small-town person." He likes striking up a conversation with his barista and greeting the familiar people he passes on the street. However, he acknowledges that life in small towns like Wrangell may not be for everyone. "Folks who grew up here, (Wrangell) they either stay here and they really like it," said Taylor, or they "have never been back, not for any reason." The Alaska Department of Labor is interested in the factors that...
Following criticism from Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, the nationwide pharmacy chain Walgreens will not seek to sell the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone in Alaska, the company said earlier this month. Though abortion is legal in Alaska, Taylor was one of 20 Republican attorneys general who wrote the nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain and urged it to not sell mifepristone by mail. The attorneys general said they disagree with a Biden administration analysis approving the sale and distribution of the drug through the mail and by c...
The Alaska Marine Highway System is working faster to hire more crew, trying to fix problems that slowed the process so much the past four years that the state failed to keep up with retirements and resignations. The hiring process was so cumbersome and excessively choosy that the state brought aboard just a few new workers out of 250 applicants forwarded by a search agency over the past year, according to a January report from the recruitment contractor. “Since 2019, AMHS has lost more staff annually than recruitment efforts can replace. F...
The state is shutting down most summer king salmon sportfishing around Cook Inlet amid continued declines in the strong, hard-running fish that not that long ago filled freezers and fueled tourism in the state’s most populated region. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game last Thursday announced an unprecedented array of restrictions and closures on sport and personal-use fishing from the Kenai Peninsula to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, a sweeping series of emergency regulations that illustrates the severity of king salmon population c...
