By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Southeast Alaska will experience sharply reduced ferry service in the fall and winter, and some towns, including Sitka, might not see a ferry for extended stretches of time under the newly proposed winter schedule for the Alaska Marine Highway System.
As proposed, the bare bones schedule released Tuesday shows Sitka without ferry service in October and November and with minimal service through the rest of the winter.
Sitka’s Sen. Bert Stedman describes the proposed schedule as “ridiculous,” and is calling on coastal residents to submit comments to AMHS before the public comment period closes July 27.
The M/V Matanuska is to undergo overhaul work in October and November, causing the total loss of service to Sitka for those months under the proposed schedule. Kake and Tenakee also won’t see a ferry in that period, while Petersburg and Wrangell will have minimal service.
In December, March, and April, the Matanuska will return to service and sail into Sitka for trips to and from Juneau once each month as part of a loop of Southeast. In the same period, the Matanuska will run to and from Bellingham three times monthly.
The schedule released Tuesday says that in January and February, only the Matanuska will be in service on the main routes in Southeast.
In contrast, so far this summer the Matanuska has docked in Sitka four times each month, Saturday and Sunday on every other weekend.
The diminished schedule would compound the problems in the ferry system, Stedman told the Sentinel today.
“The challenge that we’ve had the last couple of years with the schedule, it’s so erratic and so spaced out people quit using the marine highway,” Stedman said, “and that’s a problem, and your ridership goes down. It’s a race to the basement… It’s a downward spiral.
“More than one every two months, that’s ridiculous. If you’re down to one a week it would be nice, so you can get to another community and spend a day or two and come back. It gets expensive if you’re there for a week,” he said.
On July 1 Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed $8.5 million from the AMHS operating budget that was passed by the Legislature; last year, he vetoed $15 million. The ferry system has a $54 million state operating budget after the July 1 veto, along with $72 million in federal relief funds.
The Legislature meets again for a second special session in August to discuss fiscal matters including the Permanent Fund Dividend, but Stedman said it’s unlikely that the governor’s veto of AMHS funding will be overridden.
“We don’t have the ability for a veto override, so we have to negotiate,” he said.
Geography is always a problem for Sitka as far as ferry service is concerned, Stedman noted. “We’re outside the mainline, so we’re always going to be challenged and most likely always come up on the short end of the stick.”
Looking forward, Stedman hopes for the establishment of a governing board for AMHS, as well as a more reliable schedule.
“We’re trying to get to an 18-month schedule and we’re looking at forming the governance board. We’ve got to get those two things in place and then we’ve got to work on better service and better ridership,” he said.
A bill to establish such a governing board passed the Legislature in May, but the governor has yet to sign it.
The political environment in Alaska is another challenge Stedman said.
“The current environment is very difficult politically for the marine highway, and two years ago we were just trying to keep it alive,” he said. “So we’ve made some progress in that regard. It’s not going to be eliminated, but we’ve got to get it to a point where it’s more economically viable for the communities and for the state… That’s going to take a couple more years.”
Stedman said the problems are not going away.
“We’ll have the same issues next winter dealing with the marine highway that we’ve faced this winter. Expect it to be a repeat,” he said.
“We’re turning a corner on the marine highway and things look certainly a lot brighter now than they did two years ago, but we’ve got a ways to go and there is no easy solution,” the senator said. “We’ve got to get some new ships online and we’ve got to get the service levels up, and it has to be affordable to the communities and it has to be affordable to the state.”
Stedman hopes that coastal Alaskans will take the opportunity to make their opinions heard on the winter schedule before the document is finalized.
“I just hope that all the communities in Southeast and Prince William Sound and Kodiak weigh in on the schedule and give them input,” Stedman said.
Comments on the winter schedule can be submitted through July 27 by email at dot.amhs.comments@alaska.gov and by fax at (907) 228-6873. The schedule itself is public at https://dot.alaska.gov/amhs/doc/winter_considerations_2021.pdf. A subsequent teleconference will be at 10 a.m. on July 29 to hear more comments and consider schedule adjustments in Southeast. The toll-free number for joining the teleconference is 1-515-604-9000 and the access code 279613.
