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Each January, there is a special edition recapping the previous year. View the 2024 Year in Review (PDF 670KB).

Here is the latest edition of the WSF Weekly Update:

April 24, 2025

A message from Steve

Tuesday marked the 55th anniversary of Earth Day – a time to spotlight environmental issues and reflect on our shared responsibility to protect the planet. This year’s call to action urged us all to unite around renewable energy. This deeply aligns with the work we do at Washington State Ferries. Our commitment to sustainability goes far beyond a single day. It’s a big part of everything we do. We’re working to make the nation’s largest ferry system one of the most sustainable in the world. By using cleaner technologies and cutting down on fossil fuels, we’re helping build a greener, stronger future.

This summer, Wenatchee is set to return to service on our Seattle/Bainbridge route as our first hybrid-electric ferry. We’re also on track to sign a contract in the coming months to build the first of 16 new hybrid-electric vessels. And this is just the beginning of our system electrification efforts. We also have plans to bring vessel charging infrastructure to 16 terminals. These changes will cut our fuel consumption by 76% and greatly reduce our emissions. Our diesel vessels are one of the state’s largest emitters of pollution, burning nearly 19 million gallons of diesel fuel for an estimated 180 metric tons of emissions each year.

Electrification is only part of the story. We’ve also started composting behind the scenes. Our food service provider, Sodexo Live!, is helping with this at our Seattle and Fauntleroy terminals. These efforts may not be visible to customers, but they help cut down on our waste. We plan to expand this systemwide this summer. This week, we’re also reminding customers about the harm caused by vehicle idling and oil spills – because every small step helps protect our environment.

This Earth Day, I hope you’ll celebrate with us. We’re proud of the progress and the people making it happen. Together, we’re not just running ferries – we’re building a greener future, one crossing at a time.

Wenatchee charges closer to service

We hit an exciting milestone this week on our journey toward 26 vessels by 2040. On Monday, we successfully charged one of the two battery rooms aboard Wenatchee for the first time. This shows that the hybrid-electric system and key equipment like the energy storage system switchboard and charging transformer are working. Vigor is now getting ready for dock and sea trials in the coming weeks. When the shipyard returns Wenatchee to us, we’ll start our own tests and crew training for a few more weeks before it returns to service. In addition to switching Wenatchee to hybrid-electric power we also upgraded old propulsion control systems, improved ship controls and reworked piping and wiring. These updates will help us provide more service this summer and extend the vessel’s life by decades.

Vehicle reservations for summer season available

Vehicle reservations for our summer season (June 15 to Sept. 20) opened at 10 a.m. Tuesday. This two-month advance release is by far our busiest of the year, and this time, it was our smoothest yet. Thanks to the hard work of our IT team on recent system upgrades, we were able to handle 10 times more users per minute than before. Using a virtual waiting room to manage demand and keep our website stable, we processed more than 30,000 reservations in just under an hour. We were able to close the waiting room by 11 a.m. That’s much faster than last year, when it stayed open until 3 p.m., taking 5 hours for about 38,000 reservations to be made. A huge thank you to our incredible customer service team for being there to support our callers, and kudos to everyone who played a role in preparing for and supporting the release.

When the virtual waiting room is turned on, it’s important to note that all users must wait in line to access our vehicle reservations site. This includes people who just want to check, change or cancel a reservation. Keep this in mind during our two-month seasonal releases until we launch a new online vehicle reservations system.

Peak season surcharge begins Thursday, May 1

Starting Thursday, May 1, the peak season surcharge goes into effect for vehicle-and-driver fares. This change does not affect passenger fares and multiride products. The surcharge lasts through Sept. 30.

Tour de Lopez bike event Saturday, April 26

The annual Tour de Lopez bicycle ride will take place on Lopez Island this Saturday, April 26. Until then, plan for increased traffic on our Anacortes to Lopez sailings as attendees make their way to the island. On the morning of the event, our 7:30 a.m. Anacortes to Orcas Island sailing will stop at Lopez Island to help everyone get there.

Sailing stats for week of April 14-20

For the week of April 14-20, we completed 99.5% of our 2,763 scheduled sailings. This figure is separate from on-time performance. Of the 14 cancellations, eight were for schedule resets (when a boat is so far behind schedule, we cancel a sailing to get it back on schedule, providing predictability for customers), five due to crewing and one because of other miscellaneous reasons.

Customer kudos

“I just wanted to give a hearty thumbs up on the ease of making two important summer reservations today. I was a bit nervous due to last year. I’m also on our property on Fidalgo with 2 bars Cell but it went seamlessly. I got my place in Queue. Checked my email, got my notification in about 40 minutes and was able to make the two reservations for our doctor appointments. So KUDOS to WSF for way it all went. Thank you and pass on my thanks.”

Steve Nevey
WSDOT Deputy Secretary for Washington State Ferries