"I'm on a boat": Part IV

The Oakland Alameda Water Shuttle is likely the most universally loved of local transportation initiatives.

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The national situation: See you later today at a "No Kings" protest?

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An occasional series of posts about the Oakland Alameda Water Shuttle: This is a sequel to Part I (with a stupid music video that still makes me laugh), Part II (with a drone video), and Part III (with thoughts on the first day of service and ongoing experimentation).

The Oakland Alameda Water Shuttle is likely the most universally loved of local transportation initiatives. Unlike street safety projects, with geometric constraints that can become zero-sum debates, the Water Shuttle is purely additive — a useful new connection, where none existed before. Plus, it's an enjoyable ride!

At the May meeting of the Alameda city Transportation Commission, city staff shared that:

In April, the Water Shuttle had its busiest month since August, carrying 9,600 passengers and 2,122 bicycles. Since launching on July 17, 2024, the Water Shuttle has served over 83,000 passengers, with an average daily ridership of 413.

This week, the City of Alameda announced an expansion of Water Shuttle service:

We are thrilled to announce that we will be testing out expanded service starting on July 8, including operating six days a week with the addition of Tuesdays! The new schedule will be in place for at least four months and longer if it's successful and we have adequate funding. The changes include: New Tuesday service! Tuesday will have the same schedule as Wednesday and Thursday, which will not change from what it is today. Expanded Friday, Saturday and Sunday service! More trips and longer operating hours. 63 trips per day - a 26% increase 15 hours of service - 7:20 am to 10:30pm Shorter breaks in service Same morning departures across six days! The first 9 departures of every day will be at the same time We hope this 35% increase in weekly departures and the other enhancements will lure in new riders and encourage all of our existing riders to use Woodstock more often!

The Water Shuttle service is still heavily constrained by having a fleet of one single vessel. When there's a problem, service must be fully halted. Nor is there an ability to increase frequency during peak times of travel. Still, within these constraints, the Water Shuttle's planning and operating partners are creatively experimenting and optimizing the schedule to best meet usage by a wide range of users.

The partners are also pursuing funding to continue the service. At its May meeting, the Alameda County Transportation Commission took action toward supporting two more years of Water Shuttle operations:

Thank you to ACTC staff and board (including ACTC Vice Chair Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft). These funds will be combined together with funding from other sources, including the Alameda TMA and its members, to hopefully continue operations for two more years.

City of Alameda has also requested additional support to operate and expand the Water Shuttle from the Port of Oakland, which is planning a massive construction project nearby. In a 2,045-page PDF released this month, the Port of Oakland said nope, we're not going to help with your water shuttle. You have a boat, what use is another? Plus, we suddenly forgot the distinction between capital and operational expenses, so you can't possibly need money to pay people to actually make that one boat go back and forth. Anyway, that's a whole 1,500 feet away from our construction site and we don't understand how transportation networks work...

Ala-138 Response: As noted under response to comment Ala-134, a water shuttle between Alameda Landing and Jack London began service in July 2024; therefore, funding is no longer required to develop this service. Similar to the proposed bicycle and pedestrian bridge discussed above as part of response to comment Ala-137, the shuttle service is 1,500 feet east of the Proposed Project and not in close proximity to any of the truck routes proposed for use by the Proposed Project, except for the Webster and Posey tubes. This example mitigation measure would, therefore, not contribute to reducing the Proposed Project’s impacts and the suggestion was not incorporated into this Final EIR.

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After receiving a postcard from the Port of Oakland earlier this week, I took a skim through the final environmental impact report for this big dig of an construction effort: the Oakland Harbor Turning Basins Widening Project.

Here's a video explaining the goals of the project.

Hardly mentioned in the video is that this will involve removing a circular shaped portion of shoreline from western Alameda — and trucking it all to off-island landfills.

Back in 2023, the City of Alameda requested mitigations, to eliminate or reduce the impacts of the tens of thousands of dump-truck trips that may be involved in moving all that dirt. Expanding Water Shuttle service is just one of many substantive proposed mitigations to the heavy truck traffic and resulting air pollution proposed by Alameda.

But based on a skim of the final EIR, it looks like the response from the Port of Oakland (or its consultants) to the City of Alameda's request for mitigations is whatevs, we're just gonna remove City of Alameda as an authorizing agency from this project's docs.

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Recently when I can't sleep, I've been listening to an audiobook history of the Ports of LA and Long Beach. There's more to it than I realized [a statement that can probably be said about any aspect of the world?]. Perhaps next, I'll queue up KQED Forum host Alexis Madrigal's recent book on the Port of Oakland, its impacts on West Oakland, and its connections all across the Pacific.

It's unfortunate that for such a successful service, the Water Shuttle's partners still have to work so hard to secure funding to continue its operations. Perhaps that's just the nature of operating most any public service in post-Prop 13 California, and even more so in the America of Musk and Trump. In any case, this is a valuable service and worth the trouble.

Thanks to involved in continuing the Water Shuttle, making it an even more useful means to bridge this watery gap, and taking incremental steps toward the permanent solution of a bike/ped bridge to knit together western Alameda Island and Oakland's Jack London Square waterfront.