Now that's thinking outside of the box!
Or use a Hovercraft and deliver the customers to inland locations.
Someone please start a ferry service!
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Or use a Hovercraft and deliver the customers to inland locations.
The TJ bridge is a good example of where this area ranks in terms of "need" according to the SHA. So your point is well taken.
Gilligan hits on the other point, the NIMBY effect. There would be a lot of questions (but few answers) on where the needed infrastructure (and water access) would go.
Something tells me that the initial demand might be high, but it would fall off rapidly once time and cost were compared to the drive alternative.
First you have to line up early to get ready to load the boat. Then the loading time, followed by the transit time and then the off loading.
How long does it take a ferry, large enough to carry vehicles, to cross the bay?
What are the sea state limits (or is it bay state limits before the ferry has to cancel?
I would love it, but agree that it is highly impracticable.
tipsymcgee
Active Member
That was my question. If you live in Mechanicsville or Leonardtown and have to drive to the ferry access, wait, get loaded, cross the bay and then drive from that offload point, be it near Cambridge or Crisfield, to the beach, what time are you saving? Sure it's a less hectic commute, but after a few times people will think it doesn't save as much time AND they can't stop wherever they want at the outlets or Annapolis going to and from. It won't make sense from purely a beach travel/weekend driven business and seems like it would need daily drivers to make it work.
There is really nothing to be gained heading to the eastern shore. Mechanicsville --> Accomack co is about a 4hr drive whether you go via Annapolis or Norfolk (I have done both). Unless its one of those 40kt superfast ferrries, the crossing takes at least 2hrs. I have taken car-ferries around the country and in europe, even in the most efficient loading schemes there is always a bit of a delay between showing up at the dock and driving on board. At best, I could see a gain of an hour. There are a couple of days a year when the bay bridge is a mess when a ferry could gain you several hours, but a couple of days a year a business case does not make.
Now I have thought about standing up an Air-taxi out of St Marys Co airport. A 9 seat Cessna Caravan with a belly pod to offer fixed price feeder service to Dulles and and corporate shuttle to the tidewater area and up to New Jersey. Occasionally there may even be the friday afternoon customer who would want to go from Alexandria to Ocean City. I didn't further look into it because it would be insane ;-)
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talk about opportunity and wasted money. We, the taxpayers, built a nice new terminal and there isn't a sniff of some kind of air service.
I remember before the ATC strike there were shuttle services from small airports to the Intl ones. Parking at the local airport was free and the cost of the shuttle often was rolled into you ticket by the main carrier.
Why don't we have some kind of air service up and down the the east coast. Say no more than a 90 minute one way flight.
How many people working at Pax River take an long as drive and spend 3 days for a one day face to face meeting - all because their isn't any commercial rail or air service.
Hotel room for a night is upwards of $100.
That terminal is just a sad waste of state aviation funds (which paid for most of it). These days it isn't even used for the regular passenger traffic in and out of the airport. The chamber of commerce has a $5 million office building provided by the airport and the civil air patrol uses it for their meetings.
One reason this worked in the past was that you didn't need a security checkpoint to operate commuter air operations. Now that threshold is at 9 passengers, so unless you fly really small planes (like the Caravan or a PC12) you need a full-up TSA checkpoint with 20 government drones pulling a salary to process 3 flights a day. Also, before deregulation airlines were able to apply for a fare from lets say Easton to Chicago and wrap the price for the commuter into the total regulated ticket price.
There are similar vacant terminals in Cumberland and Easton, but neither of them is as sad as the one at 2W6.
The short answer is: Because it is not commercially viable without government subsidies. St Marys is less than 50 miles from BWI and DCA and as such doesn't qualify for essential air service subsidies. With those subsidies, it could make sense to fly a shuttle up to Dulles to connect to international flights. Even Steny can't fix that.
Not enough business to make it work. Salisbury is probably the smallest airport that can sustain a commercial operation, and even that is iffy with 3 flights to Charlotte and 4 flights to Philly.
Depends on how many people. Unless you have some sort of scheduled service where the return legs are occupied as well, the customer would pay both legs. Lets say you take a King Air 90 for 6-8 passengers from St Marys (2W6) to Ocean City (KOXB) it is about 20 minutes pure flying time. With startup and shutdown it would probably be about an hour of flight time for the retun trip. That kind of plane charters for about $1200-1600/hr so a weekend trip (friday afternoon outbound, sunday evening return) would set you back about 3 grand. There are about 5 families in St Marys county willing to burn that kind of moolah on a trip to Ocean City or Rehoboth.
There are charter flights into 2W6 for business at PAX. If it is an entire team that needs to be moved from New Jersey to PAX, a company may use a charter rather than paying 6 people several per-diems and hotels for some on-site work. There is just not that much call for charter out of St Marys.
So_what
Yes I'm an MPD, But who's
Back before the TJ Bridge there was a ferry from Solomon's to the Base (people only) People had unlicensed cars parked near Hngr. 301 to get to wherever they worked on Base. When the bridge was closed in 1983? 1984? for repairs, the Navy provided ferry service and shuttle buses on base to get around.
Our company had a beat up old Volvo station wagon to haul our Calvert employees from the ferry to our Lex Park office and back every day.
Sure..there are quite a few of those in operation around the world. Just not "here".