New Ferry

The Daily News

New boat on way for ferry fleet

By Mark Collette
The Daily News

Published July 5, 2007

GALVESTON — The Texas Department of Transportation expects to award a contract worth about $17 million on Wednesday for construction of a sixth vessel in the Galveston-Port Bolivar ferry fleet.

The boat, which would take about 18 months to build, could improve efficiency and reduce wait times at the docks, but staffing challenges could still dictate how many boats run at any given time, officials said.

“The biggest issue we have right now is the resources, the manpower,” said Wayne Welsh, assistant ferry operations manager.

“With the competition from offshore — the pay for that is substantially higher than what TxDOT has.”

TxDOT pays entry-level deckhands — the people who guide cars boarding and exiting the boats — between $18,732 and $26,736 a year, said TxDOT spokesman Norm Wigington.

Those employees are required to be documented by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Across the maritime industry, the mean U.S. wage for deckhands requiring the same documentation is $32,710, according the U.S. Department of Labor.

Welsh said that, during non-holiday weekdays, the department runs at least two boats and sometimes three. When crews are available, they operate a fourth boat.

The schedule calls for four boats Fridays through Sundays, but the third and fourth vessels depend on crew availability.

TxDOT scheduled five boats for the Fourth of July.

Recana Solutions in Galveston has a contract to staff the ferries. Its president, Debra Canady, said TxDOT’s pay is more competitive than it has been in the past.

Wigington said TxDOT hopes wait times will shorten once repair work is complete on two new docks at Galveston and one at Port Bolivar.

The new docks brought the total to three at each side, but the ferries had problems aligning with them. Wigington said the company that built the docks had failed to judge tidal changes accurately.

Ferry traffic peaks in the summer. The ferry set a record for most vehicles in a day on July 4, 1993, when 12,733 boarded, according to TxDOT records.

A private firm hired by TxDOT to study the possibility of replacing the ferry with a bridge has reported that summer wait times can exceed two hours.