Response to “Our Ferry Affair”

In Terry Sullivan’s "Ferry Affair" piece in the March 29th Loop, he argues for sustaining present levels of car ferry service, but only for now. He then paints an interesting picture of a future Vashon where we simply do without and accept a certain level of inconvenience in exchange for reduced or curtailed car ferry service.

Our family moved to the island last summer from the Minneapolis area. We chose Vashon because it is a very unique community, close to both Seattle and Tacoma yet maintaining the rustic charm of a bygone era. Hey, that sounds like a good real estate agent spiel! And, if the "low-energy" future he predicts comes to pass, boy will it be true…too true. If we "cut down on car ferries" like he suggests, Vashon will attain the rustic charm of a wild west ghost town.

If car ferries had already been cut back when we were house hunting, we never would have moved here. The house we bought would likely still be languishing on the market, its appraised value sinking faster than the Kalakala, as would the rest of the real estate market. < > The only thing that would be rising would be real estate taxes, because with a declining population the tax burden will fall on fewer and fewer people.

I work for an airline (not a job I could telecommute to or transplant to the island!) and so I commute to Sea-Tac at all different times of the day. Sharing the ferry with me on any given crossing, along with fellow worker-bees, are vans and pick-up trucks shuttling parts and supplies to our local island businesses, school buses with kids enroute to activities and competitions, minivans full of still more kids and dogs visiting relatives on the mainland, occasional ambulances and medical supply trucks, nurses and doctors commuting to or from work at all hours, and so many more. < > Lots of us commute to the mainland but buy groceries at Thriftway, go off-island to buy appliances but get burgers at Perry’s, visit our kids at their college but then take them to movies at the Vashon Theater. Until the USA as a whole is weaned off automobile-style transit, we can only do all these things practically with cars and car ferries.

Terry’s vision of the future sounds idyllic and tranquil, and while it’s appealing in many ways, it would force many people who live here today to leave. He writes eloquently, perhaps expressing the hopes of a small subset of people who believe that fewer ferries would simplify life on Vashon. The truth is reduced ferry service would result in a greatly reduced population base, an outcome with grave consequences. With significantly fewer people our health services, schools and public works dependent on tax revenue (including Vashon Island Fire and Rescue) would all be drastically underfunded, diminishing each dramatically. Every Island business would suffer with fewer customers; many would close their doors. Cost of living would rise sharply. Commuters, the lifeblood of the community, would leave in droves, as getting to and from work became more impractical when weighed against the effort necessary to maintain some semblance of home life.

Vashon is a great place to live, but it lacks the population necessary to ever be able to support a full service hospital. Large-scale manufacturing is unlikely to locate here because we’re just too geographically isolated already, and on-island employment opportunities will continue to be limited. It is a sad fact that geographically isolated small communities throughout our country are already turning into "ghost towns" unless they are "well-connected" to population centers that offer large scale services and jobs. So unless Vashon’s destiny is to be solely a retirement community, it will continue rely on the life sustaining flow of ferry traffic. My dream for the future is that those boats, and the vehicles riding on them, can be more energy efficient and sustainable. With hybrids and electric vehicles, alternate fuels, new environmentally-friendlier boat designs...I agree with Terry that our future can be a better one. But my vision for Vashon is of a vigorous local economy well linked to the "outside world" via a convenient network of car ferries.