The U.S. Maritime Administration has agreed to help finance a feasibility study for establishing a publicly financed Hawaii ferry service, a plan that may reignite public debate over one of Hawaii’s hot-button transportation and environmental issues.

Lauren K. Brand, the associate administrator for Intermodal System Development in the Maritime Administration, agreed to commit $500,000 for the ferry study after listening to a presentation by Hawaii officials last summer, said Hawaii Department of Transportation Director Ford Fuchigami.

Fuchigami emphasized that any new system would be different from the privately run “Superferry” that ended operations in 2009, and said the latest push for ferry service came from state lawmakers, not from Gov. David Ige’s administration.

State lawmakers this year approved Senate Bill 2618 instructing the department to study the possibility of re-establishing a ferry system, appropriating $50,000 to fund the effort. Ige signed the bill into law, and Fuchigami said he approached Brand for additional money needed for the study.

Fuchigami said his department is developing a work scope that will be used to solicit proposals from companies that want to do the feasibility study. He said the study will cover the options for service both between the major Hawaiian islands, and also service between some ports on the same islands.

“I think it’s a good idea,” he said. “Interisland travel, when it comes to airlines, people complain that it is very expensive.”

Having a ferry alternative should help reduce that cost, and establishing a system to shuttle between West Oahu and downtown Honolulu would help to get cars off of the road, he said.

For intraisland service, Fuchigami said he is interested in the possibility of restarting service from Kalaeloa to urban Honolulu and establishing service between the Maui ports of Lahaina and Kahului.

“The intent is to get more cars off the road, to help alleviate the H-1 (and) H-2 merge, and so forth,” Fuchigami said. “We have to be able to offer different modes of transportation to get people into town, to get cars off the road.”

Brand told Hawaii officials the state likely will need different kinds of vessels to accommodate differing sea conditions encountered on trips between the islands, and on trips between ports on the same island.

Feasibility and impact

Senate Bill 2618 instructs the department to study successful ferry systems, including those in Washington state and Alaska, as well as the impacts the system would have on traffic congestion on island roadways. The bill also requires that the department consider the impacts a system could have on the movement of invasive species between the islands.

The bill also instructs the department to identify routes and harbors for the proposed new system and calculate the potential costs and revenue for a Hawaii system.

Lawmakers also want the study to include options for financing a ferry and the “rates or fees to address operating costs” for a ferry system. Fuchigami said he expects a ferry system would require a government operating subsidy much like the city subsidy of the Honolulu bus system.

Hawaii lawmakers instructed the department to complete the feasibility study by the beginning of the 2018 session.

The state Department of Transportation was heavily involved in the drawn-out and controversial effort to establish the privately owned Superferry project during former Gov. Linda Lingle’s administration.

The state contributed about $40 million in harbor improvements to accommodate the service, and the department in 2005 made what turned out to be a disastrous decision to exempt the project from some environmental review requirements, including an environmental impact statement.

The first vessel put into service was a 349-foot catamaran able to travel between islands at up to 40 mph, and capable of carrying up to 866 passengers and 282 cars.

The Superferry system launched on Aug. 24, 2007, but was blocked two days later by protesting swimmers and surfers at Kauai’s Nawiliwili Harbor. On Aug. 27, protesters blocking the harbor forced the ferry to turn back without docking, prompting the service to suspend its Kauai trips.

Days later the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled the state should have required additional environmental reviews for the Superferry project. Lingle then called lawmakers into a special session to pass a law to allow the Superferry to continue to operate while an environmental impact statement was performed.

The Superferry resumed service to Kahului in December, but in March 2009 the state Supreme Court ruled that the law passed by the Legislature during the 2007 special session was unconstitutional. That decision forced the Superferry to halt operations again, and the company entered bankruptcy on May 30, 2009.

“The thing that we’re looking at very carefully is, what were some of the things that weren’t done the first time around?” Fuchigami said. Completing an environmental impact statement for the system is one obvious requirement, and additional community outreach “is something that is very important as well,” he said.

Panos Prevedouros, chairman of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at University of Hawaii at Manoa, said he supports the idea of a ferry between islands, but noted there have been problems with ferry service between ports on the same island.

Honolulu established a ferry dubbed TheBoat in 2007 that ran between Kalaeloa and Aloha Tower during former Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s administration, but the city scrapped the effort in 2009. That ferry ran at about 30 percent of its 149-passenger capacity.

Prevedouros said the door-to-door travel times for TheBoat were long, including the time needed to get to the docks to board the vessel, and to get from the docks to the passengers’ final destinations. The small boats used for the service were also unreliable, and provided a bumpy ride, he said.

“The people were not pleased with the whole experience, and the passengers never showed up,” he said. “Unless you really have a very good, stable and very fast boat, you’re going to have issues with travel times.”

Prevedouros is more optimistic about interisland ferry service, which he calls “a necessity” for an island state. The Superferry was popular with the public, and the community lost out when it was forced out of business by litigation, he said.

It is unlikely any private investor will want to invest in a ferry in Hawaii now, and publicly run enterprises in Hawaii tend to be expensive, he said. “I don’t like public systems in Hawaii,” he said. “Like everything that we touch, it becomes double and triple the cost.”

Opposition sustained

The state will have an easier time obtaining federal subsidies for a ferry system if it owns the ferry vessels, and Fuchigami said the state would seek a private company to run the ferry much the way Honolulu pays a private company to run the city bus system.

“Once the feasibility study is done, then at that point the hard decision is going to be made — do we move forward from there?” he said. Considerably more state funding would be needed to acquire vessels and move forward with a ferry system, which means the Legislature would have to agree to the idea.

“This thing’s not going to happen overnight,” Fuchigami said. “It’s going to take some time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was going to take me about five years to even get this thing going.”

Some of the previous opponents of the interisland ferry system have said they remain strongly opposed to the idea. Critics predicted a ferry system would likely cause invasive species such as little fire ants to spread even more rapidly across the island chain. They also predict that any system will lose money.

Kauai County Councilman Gary Hooser said earlier this year the model of a large, fast vessel is wrong for Hawaii because it uses too much fuel, goes too fast and carries too many cars, which means it would have significant impact on rural communities.

Hooser argued the state would be better off spending its money “on schools, and affordable housing and drug treatment at prison, not on subsidizing something like this that will just be a massive drain of resources.”

Fuchigami said the outlook for the ferry effort so far “looks positive,” with people coming forward to say they support the idea. On the other hand, “If the feasibility (study) comes back and says … the community’s not going to support it, we’re just going to walk away from it,” he said.