Ferry system: Website down, passengers stranded, dog fight ensues

By
Suzanne Downing
-
5

A DISASTROUS WEEK FOR MARINE HIGHWAY SYSTEM

Need a ferry reservation? Don’t go to the Alaska Department of Transportation’s web site this weekend. It’s been crashed for over 30 hours, as of 6 pm Saturday.

Meanwhile, 52 passengers were stranded in Angoon for seven hours on Thursday, after the ferry LeConte’s power system failed, according to one passenger who called the KTOO newsroom to report toilets filled to the brim with “nasty stuff.”

In that service failure, a dogfight erupted on board and one dog died.

To add insult to injury, Alaska’s largest state ferry, the Columbia, broke down in Bellingham on June 29, but repairs are taking longer than expected and it will not be in service until July 13 at the earliest. Hundreds of northbound travelers had to scrap their trips.

No general announcement was made on the State’s websites regarding these outages and inconveniences. And while the DOT website was black, a message was posted on Twitter by the Department of Transportation on Friday morning. No updates or information has been posted since.

To reschedule your travel, contact a ferry terminal directly until the Department of Transportation fixes its websites. The terminals can be reached by phone at:

5 COMMENTS

  2. The State will never run the AMHS efficiently as long as the MEBA (Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association), the IBU (Inland Boatmen’s Union), and the MMP (International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots) are so politically influential in SE Alaska. Featherbedding is institutionalized and state administrations of all stripes have found it easier pay off the unions than negotiate hard to rationalize pay and work rules.

    EM jr. is right. Sell this money losing pig now, cut our losses, and end the gravy train.

    PS: if we lobby to end the Jones Act as well, the State might even recapture some equity from the sale. http://thehill.com/opinion/international/354529-america-should-repeal-the-jones-act

  3. At one time our company had it’s own servers to host web sites. We did all the maintenance & upgrades in house. After a few years we discovered that it was cheaper to lease the Servers from Rackspace in Texas. Redundancy is everything.

  4. If the state had invested in new ships we would not be having the problems that we are blaming the crews is not the answer.
    As for the Jones act without it you will have foreign crews and that is not a good idea our country needs a strong merchant marine.

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