Why did the planners and dreamers at Alaska DOT-PF spend millions to construct and pave an additional football field-sized parking lot at the Haines ferry terminal? This is not a joke: to accommodate the terrific, revenue-positive “demand” for ferry travel on Lynn Canal aboard the new Alaska Class vessels. Recall, too, the titanic joke by the Parnell boys, when he and his legislative bed-fellows refused the 90/10, federal/state cost-share that routinely funds major transportation infrastructure, instead building two Alaska Class vessels at an expanded Ketchikan shipyard—costing the state nine-times more, plus the shipyard upgrades. Wow, titanic! After so much governmental planning, paving, refusing and spending—and successful construction—can we please get one ferry sailing Lynn Canal?
Fellow Lynn Canal residents, I ask you to please advocate in writing for some quality mask time between our mayors, legislators, governor and the helmsman of the DOT-PF. Round-trip sailing Juneau-Haines and Juneau-Skagway can be completed under 12 hours. The US-Canada border is closed, so we cut the “Golden Circle” Haines-Skagway, Skagway-Haines run. With new, purpose-designed vessels sitting idle, and the mainliner broken down, again, we must not now dither on the merits of a terminal-in-the-wilderness at Cascade Point. In your resolute advocacy, please tell your elected public servants that—more now than ever—our communities need the commerce, convenience, safety and savings that ferries provide. Working together, surely, we can get one shiny, new Alaska Class ferry off the dock and into service on the system’s most profitable run.
Burl Sheldon