Re: Driven By Customer 'Service' Parte Dos
Not sure where to put this. Sounds like a good idea.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/08/03/winthrop_trek_becomes_an_easy_sail/?p1=Upbox_links
Winthrop trek becomes an easy sail
By Eric Moskowitz
Globe Staff / August 3, 2010
Every weekday evening since the 1980s, Lisa LaVigueur has filed out of work and onto a crowded Blue Line subway for a ride to Orient Heights, where she extracts her car from the parking garage and completes the trip home to Winthrop. Yesterday she opted for a faster route ? by boat.
?I love it,?? said LaVigueur, a 50-year-old assistant at a financial firm, basking in the sun on the top deck of a new Winthrop ferry as it prepared to disembark from Rowes Wharf. ?I think it?s very relaxing. It?s not stressful, it?s not crowded, and it?s quick.??
That was the verdict on the deck, where passenger after passenger was savoring the commute aboard the freshly painted Anna, a 61-foot vessel with a cash bar, instead of via the MBTA?s Blue Line or the Callahan and Sumner tunnels.
The ferry began official operations yesterday as a three-month trial of a service Winthrop officials hope to begin permanently next spring. By then, the town will have invested close to $6 million ? including nearly $5 million in state and federal money ? in start-up costs, including planning studies as well as the construction of a new town pier, boat landing, and ferry terminal, and the purchase of a passenger vessel.
Winthrop leaders expect that the ferry will lift the drudgery of commuting for a few hundred residents a day, offering a scenic 20- to 25-minute ride that saves some time but costs a bit more.
Officials see the ferry as a catalyst for economic development and a way to inject life into the town?s waterfront, which is how congressman Edward J. Markey and House Speaker Robert DeLeo, a Winthrop Democrat, pitched the project while helping to secure the funds. The two are expected to join state Senator Anthony Petruccelli and other supporters on a ceremonial midmorning cruise today from Winthrop to Boston.
?This is a very important project for the town of Winthrop,?? said James McKenna, town manager. ?We are looking to really have a new vision for the town which involves not only improving access to the city of Boston for the residents . . . but also to create Winthrop as a destination.??
Winthrop, a community of less than 20,000, occupies a 1.6-square-mile peninsula extending into Boston Harbor, less than 5 miles from the State House. But the overland routes are not as direct, leaving the estimated 4,200 residents who work in the city a sometimes frustrating set of options, said Paul Rupp, a consultant working with the town on the project.
Town officials have talked about a ferry for more than a decade. They tried to interest the MBTA ? which operates ferries from Charlestown, Hingham, Quincy, and Hull to downtown Boston ? but found little appetite for expanded service at the financially strapped transit agency, which already strains to meet operating costs while paying off a debt load that exceeds $8 billion in principal and interest.
So Winthrop decided to start its own ferry, putting out a request for proposals for private boat companies to run a three-month trial. That yielded an agreement with Boston Harbor Cruises, an 84-year-old passenger, whale watch, and charter operator that already runs the T?s Hingham and Charlestown ferries.
Boston Harbor Cruises is providing its own boat, the 149-passenger Anna, and running five weekday roundtrips synched with peak commuting hours. The trial will help the town and the company determine demand and appropriate service levels for a more permanent contract Winthrop expects to put out to bid this fall or winter to begin year-round service next spring.
The trial, running through Oct. 29, costs $6 one-way, the same as the T?s South Shore ferries. The T subsidizes those boats through contracts that provide the operators as much as $2 million a year. Winthrop is subsidizing about one-fourth the roughly $90,000 a month that the trial costs, but officials hope ticket sales and on-board concessions will cover future expenses, Rupp said.
However the deal is structured, ferry riders said they hope it lasts. Maria Bergman, an administrative assistant at an asset management firm, said her first ferry trip was quite a change from the Blue Line. ?It was like a mini-vacation,?? said Bergman, 45, before climbing to the top deck for the return voyage.
Below deck, Mike Mason sipped a beer ($5.25) from the galley, a feature not found on the Blue Line.
?A hard day?s work and a cold beer,?? said Mason, 35, a salesman for a financial software firm. ?It?s nice.??
