It’s past time for Southeast and coastal Alaska communities to be heard regarding the collapse of our ferry system.
It’s time to more forcefully make our needs known by energizing the Southeast Conference, the Southeast Conference of Mayors and other organizations. Southeast and coastal Alaska are entitled to have a highway functioning just like our roaded neighbors to the north. The newly passed federal infrastructure bill provides the federal funding to make this happen, if we don’t let it slip away
The Alaska Marine Highway System was created in the early 1960s. Our new state quickly recognized that Southeast Alaska’s transportation needs could only be served by ferries. Three vessels were built and they were in service for over 50 years, serving the port of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, with its Canadian highway connection, along with Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Sitka, Juneau, Haines and Skagway.
The AMHS was a significant economic engine for Southeast’s economy.
But, several of the fleet’s vessels have been sold or scrapped in recent years. While the state administration says, “There is no plan to cut or destroy the Alaska Marine Highway System,” the real story is in the ridership. With fewer vessels, ridership has crashed to a fraction of what it was.
Sailings to communities dropped down to one stop per week, when previously it had averaged every other day.
The largest of the vessels, the Columbia, has been berthed at the state-owned Vigor Shipyard in Ketchikan for the past two years.
Service to Prince Rupert is almost non-existent.
Excuses offered by the administration for the decline in AMHS traffic include the impact of COVID-19, the shortage of trained crew members and funding for the system. Unfortunately, the mentality behind denying sufficient funding to support the AMHS is that it is not generating enough revenue to cover operations and maintenance costs.
It should be obvious that our land highways also don’t collect sufficient revenue to cover operations and maintenance costs; rather, the return to the public is a vibrant and strong Alaska economy. Southeast must continue to be included in our statewide transportation structure on an equal footing with the rest of Alaska.
The evidence is clear that the AMHS is in grave danger of failing and moving into the history books, just as the timber industry did in the 1990s. Should Southeast lose its public transportation capacity, the impact upon its 32 communities, particularly the small communities, would be devastating.
With attention to management and sufficient funding, it doesn’t have to end that way. As a consequence of the recently passed federal infrastructure bill, the AMHS is eligible for the following funds:
- $1 billion for a new program that establishes an essential ferry service to support rural communities. The funding money is only available for rural ferry routes over 50 miles in length, of which Alaska has many and other states very few.
- $250 million for an electric or low-emitting ferry pilot program, with at least one pilot to be conducted in the state with the most marine highway system miles — Alaska.
- $342 million for construction of ships and ferry terminal facilities, of which Alaska should receive $73 million.
- And authorizes federal highway funds to the Alaska Marine Highway System to be spent on operation and repair.
So, there are clearly federal funds available to restructure the ferry system, and those funds must not be diverted to other state projects.
To start off the new year, we should consider the following schedule which is achievable based on our long history in the Prince Rupert route structure:
First, we should take the Colombia out of layup and run it on regularly scheduled weekly sailings departing Bellingham, Washington, and proceeding north to serve Southeast.
Second, the Matanuska should operate twice weekly from Prince Rupert to Ketchikan and Southeast communities as far as Juneau. From Juneau we could utilize the day ferries, Tazlina and Hubbard, to move people and vehicles north to Skagway and Haines. From there, they could connect to the Alaska highway system into Anchorage and Fairbanks and waypoints.
With a firm schedule, and advanced advertising that entices visitors to Alaska with their automobiles, the AMHS would be in a position to resume traffic levels on our vessels approaching the record of 280,000 we established in the early 2000s.
Regaining these levels of public transport would benefit not only all of Alaska but particularly the economy of Southeast, which is currently in rapid decline. It is up to us.
Frank H. Murkowski is a former Alaska governor (2002-2006) and U.S. senator (1980-2002), and a resident of Wrangell.
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