Posts about Ferries

Inside, the boats have a double row of seats and a crew of 2 or 3. There are no bathrooms, and no vending.

Shortly after casting off from Washington Harbor there are great views of Georgetown and Foggy Bottom.

Washington Harbor.

Georgetown Waterfront Park.

Watergate.

Kennedy Center.

Thanks to calm water and shoreline trails, the river and its banks are multi-modal.

Boats, bikes, cars, and joggers.

The Roosevelt Bridge is the first of many that the ferry passes under.

Roosevelt Bridge, with Arlington Memorial Bridge behind.

Roosevelt Bridge.

Between Roosevelt and Memorial bridges, the monuments of the National Mall are visible.

Washington Monument.

Washington and Lincoln.

Washington and Lincoln, perfectly aligned.

Memorial Bridge is the most ornate of Washington's Potomac bridges.

Memorial Bridge.

Memorial Bridge.

Memorial Bridge.

Monuments continue to be visible as the ferry passes West Potomac Park.

Washington Monument.

Jefferson Monument.

The 14th Street Bridge looks very plain.

14th Street Bridge.

14th Street Bridge.

14th Street Bridge.

Metrorail's Yellow Line bridge is even plainer.

Metrorail Bridge.

Last and oldest of the 14th Street Bridge cluster, the Long Bridge looks ancient compared to any other on the river.

Long Bridge (right), with Metrorail Bridge (left).

Long Bridge.

After crossing below Long Bridge, East Potomac Park becomes visible on the east bank, while Crystal City and National Airport dominate the west bank.

US Capitol visible behind East Potomac Park.

National Airport, with Alexandria's Masonic Washington Monument in the background.

Crystal City.

Looking back upstream, Rosslyn, the National Cathedral, and the Washington Monument are prominent.

Rosslyn, the National Cathedral, and the Washington Monument.

Rosslyn.

At Hains Point the ferry turns to go up the Anacostia River.

Hains Point.

Looking up the Anacostia, the Frederick Douglass Bridge rises, and the baseball stadium comes into view.

Douglass Bridge.

Nats park and US Capitol.

Yards Park becomes visible beneath Douglass Bridge.

Douglass Bridge, with Yards Park.

The stadium looms large above the river.

Nats Park.

Nats Park.

Finally, the ferry docks at Diamond Teague Park, just downstream from Navy Yard.

Diamond Teague Park docks.

For even more photos of the ride, view the complete Flickr set.

No neighborhood on either side of the Anacostia will have anywhere near the population density of Vancouver's Yaletown, whose towers exceed 30 stories tall (except in the unlikely event that a consensus builds to create La Défense on the Anacostia and allow tall towers at Poplar Point). But the Capitol Riverfront will still be a dense neighborhood by DC standards. The Navy Yard is a major employment center, and more jobs are coming to JBAB.

A lot of the riders of False Creek Ferries are tourists. We don't have one of the city's largest tourist attractions right on the river, at least not yet. Hop on-hop off tour buses do not come down to Near Southeast right now. However, Washington draws huge numbers of tourists. If we can draw tourists to the river, they could fill the ferries.

The National Capital Planning Commission often talks about where to put all of the memorials and museums that groups constantly want to build, but which can't possibly all fit on the Mall.

Southwest Ecodistrict. Image from NCPC.

The Southwest Ecodistrict plan seeks to remake the L'Enfant Promenade into a pleasant place to walk with a significant museum at its end. Tour buses, like the Open Tops, do go to the end of the promenade. What if, instead of the Banneker Overlook being a dead-end excursion off the Mall, it becomes a jumping-off point to another Mall... the Water Mall?

Potential ferry stops from Banneker Park to Anacostia Park.

The ferries would have to stretch a little farther than Vancouver's, but even the trip end-to-end shown here is only about 4½ route miles versus 3 for False Creek. The Park Service could place new museums and memorials in many spots in Anacostia Park and have plenty of room left over for recreation and nature.

The future Mall Circulators could have a stop at Banneker, and ultimately the streetcar could go to the Buzzard Point dock and the 11th Street Recreation Bridge, connecting directly to the ferries. The stops would be a short walk from L'Enfant Plaza, Navy Yard and Anacostia Metro stations.

Blue pins are potential ferry stops. Red lines are planned streetcar routes.

Tour itineraries could suggest that families spend one day walking on the Land Mall and then one day cruising the Water Mall.

The ferries might not be able to run completely at a profit, given the lower population density along the Anacostia and the longer distance. But if the Water Mall becomes enough of a tourist attraction, who knows?

Top: The Spirit of False Creek 3. Bottom left: Cape May-Lewes ferry.
Bottom right: NY water taxi. Images from Wikipedia.

An operator stands on a platform in the center and drives the boat with a few joysticks and handles, while passengers sit around the edges. It operates a lot like a bus; in fact, the drivers even cruise past some of the docks and won't stop if nobody's waiting to get on or off.

The False Creek ferries only ply a route about 2 miles from end to end as the crow flies, or 3 route miles, zigzagging back and forth across the waterway.

Besides Granville Island and the science museum, they stop at a maritime museum, science museum, and a space museum with a planetarium and observatory. A stop in Stamps Landing takes you to a neighborhood with a lot of restaurants, and another, Yaletown, is a district with many new condo towers.

False Creek Ferries route map.

Each stop is only about 2-5 minutes apart, and costs $3.25 to $6.50 CAD depending on how far you go. The most popular route, the aquatic center to Granville Island, runs every 5 minutes from 7 am to 9 pm, or 10:30 pm in the summer. The other routes run every 15 minutes from about 9 am to 5-6 pm (depending on destination) in the winter and 7-9 pm during summer.

Best of all, the ferries actually operate completely self-sufficiently. In fact, there are 2 ferry companies that compete with one another!

Is this relevant to DC? It turns out that False Creek is about the size of the Anacostia:

False Creek (top) and Anacostia River (bottom) at the same scale. Images from Google Maps.

While not very wide, the Anacostia is a mighty gulf separating two sides of the river. For a long time, there was little on the banks of the Anacostia, on either side. But that is changing. We already have the ballpark, and Yards Park. Buzzard Point could get a soccer stadium.

On the east, Poplar Point is slated for development, possibly including a boulevard from Anacostia Metro to the water's edge. Historic Anacostia is not far from the river. Plus, if DC builds the 11th Street Recreation Bridge, we could have a significant attraction right on the river.

A ferry bouncing back and forth across the river, with stops at all of these attractions, could bring the two sides closer together than ever before and make the water a public space. These 7 stops cover a route about 2 miles long, or about the same length as the part of the the False Creek Ferries route network east of Granville Island.

Potential ferry stops on the Anacostia. Image by the author on Google Maps.

The Buzzard Point stop would be near a future soccer stadium and the Poplar Point stop at the end of a retail-lined avenue leading to Anacostia Metro. A stop at the 11th Street recreation bridge would connect directly to the streetcar and to all of the activities on the bridge, as well as being a short walk to Historic Anacostia.

A set of office buildings is going in the triangle east of the 11th Street Bridge and south of the freeway, and once the freeway segment to Barney Circle gets turned into a boulevard, there could be a pedestrian connection from the water up to Capitol Hill and Potomac Avenue Metro. Sadly, the CSX railroad bridge is too low for boats to travel under, so the ferries couldn't reach Hill East.

None of this precludes other types of ferries, like the longer-distance water taxis from places like Alexandria or Georgetown, or even farther south in Virginia, if those make sense. Those would use larger boats, running much less often.

Could this ferry system work here? I'll give my take in Part 2. Meanwhile, what do you think?

The first line, to the Russell Building, opened in 1909, with lines going to the Hart, Dirksen, and Rayburn buildings opening between 1960 and 1982. The secret subway isn't really a secret, and although it's not open to the public, visitors can catch a ride if they arrange one with their Congressperson.

The Aqueduct Bridge: Non sequitur though it may be, there was indeed once a bridge that carried boats over the Potomac.

It opened in 1843 and was called the Aqueduct Bridge. It ran from the C&O Canal in Georgetown across the river to Rosslyn, where it met a canal going from there to Alexandria. Canal boats of the day were too fragile to survive the river, so a bridge was needed.

Photo by NCinDC on Flickr.

Although the main span of the aqueduct was torn down when the Key Bridge was built in 1923, the old abutments remain on both the DC and Virginia sides. In fact, visitors to Georgetown can walk right up onto the ruins, to be greeted by some of the city's loveliest views.

The Montgomery/Loudoun ferry: Since 1817 there has been ferry service across the Potomac between Montgomery and Loudoun Counties. White's Ferry, as it is currently known, is a floating slab of concrete that runs along a cable connected to both sides of the river. It carries cars, pedestrians and bicyclists commuting between Maryland and Northern Virginia every day of the week.

Photo by chriggy1 on Flickr.

Trolley remnants: Trolleys were once the bread and butter of urban transportation. As whole towns are now built around cars, whole towns were once built around streetcars. Although it's been 49 years since the last trolley rolled down a Washington street, there remains a plenitude of vintage trolley infrastructure.

The most famous cases are the abandoned trolley subway station under Dupont Circle and the trolley tracks visible on P Street in Georgetown, but those examples aren't alone. There are least four old trolley station depots still standing, at Glen Echo Park in Maryland, on Colorado Avenue, on Calvert Street, and on Connecticut Avenue (though that last may have only served buses).

From left to right, the Connecticut Avenue terminal in Chevy Chase,
the 14th & Colorodo NW terminal, the Calvert Street terminal.

Car barns, where trolley vehicles were stored when not in use, remain standing and converted to other purposes in several neighborhoods across the city. Even the light poles on the Klingle Valley Bridge are remnants of trolleys; they're twice as tall as the lights they hold because decades ago they also strung trolley wires.Washington is a fascinating city a long and diverse history. What other little-known pieces of the city can you name?