WSF Celebrates Long-Awaited Steelcutting for New Hybrid-Electric Ferries

After years of preparation, Washington State Ferries celebrated the steel-cutting for a series of hybrid-electric ferries at Eastern Shipbuilding Group's facility in Florida. The ferry service is buying three of the 160-vehicle vessels from Eastern, including a one-vessel option that it has decided to exercise.

"This is the first time in a decade that Washington State is building ferries," said WSF electrification program administrator David Sowers. "We restored our ferry system to full, domestic service. Now, we are taking a significant step toward rebuilding our fleet."

The steel-cutting ceremony is the first step in a long construction timeline, and the vessels will deliver starting in 2030. The current fleet is aging - more than half of its 21 ferries are over 40 years old - and reliability issues are becoming a problem. WSF believes that its service will benefit from fleet renewal - in addition to the benefits of electrification. WSF has announced plans to keep building and acquire as many as 16 new vessels by 2040.

The decision to build the ferries out of state was locally controversial, as prior orders had gone to a Washington yard. But the Washington State governor's office says that the sole local bid received would have had an all-in cost of $1.51 billion for three ferries - about $200 million more than the legislature provided for the project. The comparable all-in figure for Eastern's bid came in at about $360 million less. The state accepted the lower bid, and it wants to use the cost savings to help pay for a fourth ferry; it emphasizes that it still sends all ferry maintenance dollars to local shipyards.

An initial plan to build five 144-car, plug-in hybrid-electric ferries was launched in 2019 with a local shipbuilder, Vigor Industrial. Deliveries would have started this decade, but the program came to an end in 2022 when the unit cost estimate exceeded the state's expectations.