Outside the Lines: Ferry Tales XXXIV

Facts and Fictions

"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as much as you please." Mark Twain

The headline that Geluso printed in the SVH last week is definitely misleading - "Numbers don’t lie: Ridership on Guemes Ferry is up." He also seems to mistakenly believe that the late evening extended service boycott was intended to apply to all ferry runs: " There’s something interesting hiding in the Guemes Island ferry’s ridership numbers. It has only been a month and a half since the weeknight ferry service began, but it appears that a suggested boycott, which began in early July when late-evening weeknight service started, isn’t working. Comparing the first three weeks of August to June, the average weekday ridership is up by 35 percent for walkon passengers, and by 22 percent for vehicles." I can’t help but wonder why. Perhaps Geluso is simply the last person on Earth to realize that ferry ridership rises in the Summer (and falls in the Fall).

Jean Alden, Controller, Skagit County Public Works, has sent LineTime spreadsheets with ridership data going back to 2001 and accounts of revenue, expenses and deficits for the last twelve years. LineTime offered to share this information with Geluso. Despite Geluso's assertion ("Numbers don't lie"), Steve Cox insists, "“Any interim analysis after a month and a half can be analyzed any way.”

What is undeniable is that Skagit County Board of County Commissioners {BOCC} is losing money on the Guemes Ferry. They arbitrarily passed a resolution to lose more money by extending hours unnecessarily and against the wishes of the majority of Guemes residents or property owners. This majority has been verified by each and every survey conducted. The only difference seems to be the percentage of the majority. This info is also readily available. If I can access this info, I think that Geluso could as well.

Friends of Guemes Island {FGI} is actively pursuing the interests of this majority. FGI had its day in court and Snohomish County Judge Allendorfer ruled that the extended hours may impact life on Guemes and the BOCC needs to prove otherwise.

Is ferry ridership up as Geluso states in his article? Is Jean Alden’s data incorrect? Is the headline and story misleading? Geluso is comparing June’s ridership to August’s. That is equivalent to comparing apples with oranges. In so doing, Geluso’s numbers do not come close to the true reflection of ridership, year to year, or for the extended hours which began on July 6th, 2006, or the change in ridership patterns as a result of the January 1 fare increase. I can see the mid October SVH headline now. NUMBERS DON’T LIE: RIDERSHIP ON GUEMES FERRY PLUMMETS.

If you read a little further, you’ll see that the goal of the BOCC is to eliminate or shorten lines of cars backed up on 6th street, queued to board the 6 PM ferry. Who knew that was the real goal of extending the ferry service to 10PM?

James Geluso is doing all his Skagit County readers a tremendous disservice. He's emphasing a routine variance in ridership patterns and ignoring the very dramatic rising deficits. SVH editors should do their job and edit errors, whether those errors are grammatical, informational or representational.

Commentary by MJ Andrak

[9.4.6]

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