The Oak Bluffs select board criticized how the Steamship Authority (SSA) is being managed on Tuesday, June 11, jabbing at the seeming deterioration of services provided by the ferry line.
In particular, officials called for improvements to the ferry reservation system.
Robert Davis, the SSA general manager, appeared over Zoom during the select board meeting.
The meeting with Davis was triggered by SSA staff recommending 41 North Offshore, a New Bedford company, be licensed to provide on-demand freight services to Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs during a Port Council meeting in May. Davis had neglected to notify Oak Bluffs officials about the proposal.
“A lot of it, we’re hearing it from the newspapers,” Mark Leonard, Oak Bluffs select board member, said at the meeting.
The board members called for better communication from the SSA with the town, which Davis said will be done. However, this was only one of several issues discussed during the meeting.
The biggest problem raised by multiple officials was what seems to have been a deterioration of the SSA’s reservation system and Islanders’ access to the vehicle spots on the ferries.
The SSA had been told by Thomas Innis from Gibbous, a firm tapped to review the authority’s information infrastructure (IT) in December, that the ferry line had been underinvesting in its IT systems.
Innis had said overhauling the SSA’s IT infrastructure could take two years to complete. This includes the reservation system, which was originally built in 1997.
Davis said the reservation system was a separate project from the overdue new website, which is still in development. He said a request for proposals for an improved reservation system is expected to be issued by the end of the year.
Gail Barmakian, the Oak Bluffs select board chair, said the “bottom line” was that Islanders’ inability to get a ride on the ferries has never been so bad.
“People are at their wits’ ends,” Barmakian said. She said many people have told her about how ferries would show up as full online, but there was space remaining for cars when the vessel actually left the docks.
Emma Green-Beach, an Oak Bluffs select board member, said she’s heard from many of her friends that they’ve had difficulty getting ambulances off the Island for repairs because the reservation system showed full boats.
Leonard said it was “so surprising” that the reservation system hadn’t been a higher priority for the SSA. He also said a real-time system that can show when space for a vehicle becomes open should be implemented.
Davis said having the reservation system show vehicle space availability in real time was something that will be looked at for the upgrades.
Other concerns board members expressed included the multiple ferry breakdowns over the past year, and the crew shortages. The lack of staff has also reduced the number of SSA freight ferry trips that will be run on the Vineyard route.
“Is the Island growing too fast for the Steamship to keep up?” Dion Alley, Oak Bluffs select board member, asked Davis. “Our needs are continuing to grow.”
In particular, Alley underscored the growing year-round population means more people relying on freight cargo delivering essential items like food, and the many seniors who need access to the boats for medical services they can’t get on the Island.
Davis said the SSA tends to carry up to 85 percent of the vehicle capacity on the Vineyard route. Davis said the ferry line wants to avoid always hitting full capacity to account for factors like seasonal traffic trying to get to or from the Vineyard, and vessels needing repair, which can affect ferry availability. He said this has been evaluated annually for the past 20 years with a “cost of service study.”
As for truck reservations, he said a categorization called the “three-space truck” consists of vehicles 35 feet to under 55 feet. A 40-foot truck, Davis said, may take up the space of two passenger vehicles.
Compared with 20 years ago, Davis also said the rise in online retail has increased the demand for the SSA’s services, and the ferry line has had to make technological upgrades to its vessels.
However, Davis said better allocation of vehicles on a vessel, like the freight ferry Governor, is something the SSA is reviewing.
Barmakian said some of the issues the SSA was dealing with seemed “foreseeable,” like the crew shortage and the need for improvements for the ferry reservation system.
Joe Sollitto, the Oak Bluffs representative to the Port Council, shared with the board some of his fellow councilors’ dissatisfaction with how the SSA was managed, like the “crazy” process of making a new website before building a new reservation system, or the crew shortage issues that should have been prepared for months in advance.
“They don’t anticipate problems, they react to problems,” Sollitto said.
Sollitto also pointed to the evaluation Davis received from the Port Council and SSA board. Several councilors and board members gave Davis a score of 75 or lower out of 100, although some officials did give Davis high marks.
“Generally, Joe, I don’t believe any of the explanations anymore, or the answers, because they’re not making sense to me,” Barmakian said regarding the SSA.
