Lee on ferry ridership trends and per-passenger subsidy
Lee asks about ridership and subsidy trends. Peck reports ridership at near all-time highs despite winter disruptions, with per-passenger subsidy at $8.33, down 30% since the ferry's start, lower than other ferry systems nationwide.
The timeline?
Not yet.
We will get back to you.
And will the work be conducted during lowest ridership months to reduce disruption?
We're going to stage it so that it does have the least disruption.
But we'll get back to you the specifics on that.
Sure.
And a follow-up, which we can cover then, is will riders be able to continue utilizing the stop while the construction is underway?
Yes, and we're not going to close the stop.
Okay, great.
And will there be any impact on ferry ridership or revenue levels?
We're hoping, during construction, we hope not because we're going to try to stage it accordingly.
We don't want it to impact ridership.
Ridership is incredibly important for us, but we're also hoping that with the completion of the construction, that'll increase ridership because there'll be more people that'll be able to queue there.
Thank you.
And on the cost side, do you have any information you can share on ridership trends?
I know ridership's up, I believe, but that as well as the per passenger subsidy that we expect for this year.
Yeah, so ridership was at an all-time high when we've had a little bit of a hit because of
the terrible cold winter that we had.
I don't know if you had, we had a stop service a couple of days because there was ice.
But ridership is still very high.
It's a really beloved, very popular way of people going from place to place and we wanted to continue to be that way.
The Rockaway Rocket has become more and more popular as well.
So we're really excited about how the ferries is done.
The price per subsidy is about, price per subsidy per passenger is about $8.33, and it's lower than any other ferry passenger across the country, as well as the Long Island Railroad or Metro North.
So we're really proud of that.
It's down 30% since the start of the ferries, so we've worked really hard to make sure that that
that the price for subsidy has gone down and we're running the ferries financially efficient.
And do we expect the shifting cost of fuel to have an impact on that per passenger subsidy or an increase in costs this coming summer in particular?