Council Members Call for Greater Support of Ferries
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The city and the state are not investing enough to help the private ferry companies that transport commuters into Manhattan, two members of the City Council charged yesterday.
John Liu, chairman of the council’s Transportation Committee, and David Yassky, chairman of the Waterfronts Committee, called on the city to forgive the $1.5 million in docking fees that the struggling companies pay annually.
They also called on the city Department of Transportation to spend the $425,000 it was allotted in the last budget to subsidize the ferries, and they said the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, too, should pitch in.
Mr. Liu, a Democrat of Queens, said, “For a fraction of the capital cost required to expand our mass-transit capacity in the ground we could be expanding our mass-transit capacity on our waterways.”
