FERRY BOAT RUNS BETWEEN SF AND RICHMOND TO START IN FALL 2018

A small but meaningful contribution to San Francisco’s and the entire Bay Area’s much hated traffic congestion is the opening of the San Francisco to Richmond ferry service—scheduled to be running next year in September.

The commuter ferry service to the East Bay city of Richmond from San Francisco is a retro move (historically, ferries used to be the way to get around the Bay) that signals our Bay Area future where car populations are shrinking and people-moving alternatives are burgeoning, particularly inside the cities.

The ferry will take 30 minutes from terminal to terminal. The new terminal in Richmond broke ground this week, at a cost of $20 million. It’s estimated that 800 people a day will use the new ferry, with 1700 a day using it a decade later.

The San Francisco Chronicle stated, “The Richmond service is part of a rebirth in ferry service around the bay. The Bay Area’s two major operators, Golden Gate Ferry and San Francisco Bay Ferry, have seen ridership swell by more than a million passengers in the past four years to just over 5 million last year.”