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St. Petersburg, Tampa approve $700,000 for cross-bay ferry

 
Published Aug. 5, 2016

Three down. One to go.

The city councils of St. Petersburg and Tampa voted to pitch in $350,000 each Thursday to pay for a six-month tryout of a ferry service connecting the two cities' downtown waterfronts.

The Hillsborough County Commission unanimously approved the four-government agreement with HMS Ferries on Wednesday. The Pinellas County Commission is scheduled to consider the plan on Tuesday.

In St. Petersburg, council member Jim Kennedy welcomed the idea of Tampa Bay's biggest local governments "all working together side by side on transportation" and said he hoped it marked the "beginning of a wonderful relationship."

St. Petersburg will use BP settlement funds for its share of the project. Council member Ed Montanari was the only St. Petersburg council member to vote against the project. Council member Lisa Wheeler-Bauman was not present.

Each local government will cover a quarter of the $1.4 million pilot project, and the city of St. Petersburg will also spend up to $50,000 for dock and terminal improvements. The city has been the lead government working on the project.

Approval is still needed from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers by Sept. 15, but St. Petersburg has an "out" in its contract with the Seattle-based HMS Ferries if the deadline is not met, city development administrator Alan DeLisle said.

The program is designed to determine whether the region can sustain a permanent ferry system between the two cities. Kennedy wanted to know how success would be determined. That still needs to be worked out among the government entities, DeLisle said.

The service is expected to start as soon as Nov. 1, with two round-trip crossings a day and three on Friday. One-way fares are expected to be $10 each way.

"The fare strikes me as a little high," council member Darden Rice said, asking whether there's a way to offer passengers rebates.

DeLisle said there will be ways to reduce the costs.

"HMS is on top of that," he said. "The $10 is not set."

As planned, HMS Ferries would get the first $125,000 of the ferry's revenues. Anything the service made above that would be split among the four government entities.

The ferry has 149 seats, DeLisle said, and projections show that with 25 percent ridership, each participant in the agreement would get about $50,000 back. At 75 percent of capacity, each could expect to receive $200,000, he said.

But in Tampa, City Council member Charlie Miranda said he hadn't seen a business plan or a pro forma projection of revenues and expenses, and was skeptical that the ferry would return money to the sponsoring governments.

"This is public money," said Miranda, who cast Tampa's only vote against the project. "Why do I have to subsidize a private enterprise?"