As if years of political interference and, for many elected officials, disinterest weren’t enough to sink the Alaska Marine Highway System, rust and age could finish the job.
Maybe the answer is some duct tape to keep the ships running just a little longer until they turn 65 years old and could qualify for Medicare.
But that’s too long to wait — the marine highway needs urgent care.
The ships are aging, which is a polite way of saying they are long past their prime and getting older and rustier. Salt water accelerates the process.
The Matanuska, age 62, went into the shop last year for the equivalent of a full-body scan to determine how much severe rust had weakened parts of the ship. The state is withholding the results of that survey until next month, much like a doctor makes you wait for bad news.
The Columbia, age 52, spent much of last year at the shipyard for replacement of rusted steel.
The LeConte, a youngster just barely in its 50s, is still in the shop, more than two months after crews went to work replacing rusted fire mains.
Meanwhile, plans to replace the Tustumena, now 62 years old, are still just plans. After years of design and changes and redesign, the state plans to seek bids this fall for a replacement ship.
With all that redesign, hopefully the new ferry will work out better than the two “fast ferries” built at a cost of $68 million almost 20 years ago that never worked out so well in Alaska. The state later sold the two ships in 2021 for just over $5 million to a Mediterranean tour operator in Spain.
Marine Director Craig Tornga is working hard to restore credibility and the public’s faith in the ferry system. But he can only do so much with the tools he has on deck. Ridership is down about 40% from a decade ago and inching up only slightly, and the Alaska Marine Highway does not have money for all the replacement ships it needs, nor does it have enough crew to run the ships it has in working order.
The crew shortage, which has been a problem for several years, prevents the full fleet from going to sea. The staffing shortage is not limited to the ferries, it plagues many of the operations at the Department of Transportation.
The department’s answer, as presented in its budget submission to the Legislature this year, starts off: “Meeting these needs requires a strategic and adaptive approach, leveraging new technologies, fostering a supportive organizational culture, and evolving human resources practices to adapt to workforce dynamics, especially in rural and remote regions.”
That sounds like duct taping up a dictionary to cover the hole and hoping it stops the rust.
- Wrangell Sentinel
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