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In his first memo to workers on Tuesday, the newly appointed head of Washington State Ferries mentioned his purpose is to shift “from an ego-based tradition to a people-first, value-based tradition.”
“I typically say to my workers that we’re the most important ferry system in the US, and we ought to start out performing prefer it,” Steve Nevey wrote. “Collectively, let’s turn out to be the usual of operational excellence in opposition to which each and every ferry system on the earth measures itself.”
Nevey is correct to decide to transformation in a troubled transportation system that fails to encourage the arrogance it as soon as did. However the former senior supervisor at Holland America Group, who joined WSF as its marine operations director in 2021, faces a tall process in delivering on that goal. His purpose follows years of underfunding and mismanagement that has left the state’s 10-route marine freeway community with too few boats and other people to function them.
Although it at the moment sails a fraction of its former schedule on a depleted fleet of vessels, WSF maintained a security document of no fatalities because of crashes.
That just about modified in July 2022, when a longtime captain plowed the M/V Cathlamet into a gaggle of pilings on the West Seattle dock, mangling the ferry. Passengers got here near critical damage as metal collapsed towards them. A federal investigation concluded the captain, Dave Cole, possible fell asleep within the wheelhouse. He resigned the day after the crash.
A recent investigation by KING 5 discovered Cole had a historical past of reprimands — failing to point out up at work on a number of events and even falsifying a logbook to cover his absence. Ferry staff warned WSF leaders they “didn’t really feel secure” with him on the helm in an unsigned word.
The crash sidelined a ship in a thinly stretched fleet, additional tarnished the system’s popularity and price thousands and thousands of {dollars} — insurance coverage premiums alone rose 15.7% for your entire system in 2024 partially due to the collision.
In the meantime, the state simply paid $8.5 million to settle a lawsuit during which ferry staff allowed a clearly intoxicated driver to depart a vessel and onto Whidbey Island, the place she killed two folks after hitting their car head-on. Ferries’ deckhands mustn’t have allowed her to drive off, however with no Washington State Patrol trooper out there close to the Clinton dock, they let her drive away, with deadly penalties.
Lastly, the M/V Walla Walla ran aground last April on Bainbridge Island whereas plying the Seattle-Bremerton run. In that case, it wasn’t the crew, however relatively the aged vessel that induced the issue. Clogged gasoline filters, the result of bacterial and fungal growth in diesel storage tanks, killed the facility to the 50-year-old Walla Walla’s mills and disabled its steering, inflicting the grounding. Nobody was harm.
These three occasions are reminders of the potential perils of working a system of a whole bunch of sailings every day. Regardless of the monotony, workers members can not turn out to be complacent or unwilling to lift the alarm earlier than issues go incorrect.
Nevey expressed to workers a want for a brand new tradition “the place everyone seems to be aligned with the large image and understands how seemingly small choices or actions that they make have an effect on the broader group.”
Nevey is a veteran mariner with greater than twenty years of expertise, relatively than a state Division of Transportation bureaucrat, on the helm of a system that transported 18.6 million people in 2023.
He should make sure the three current incidents are a wake-up name, relatively than a harbinger of extra calamity to return.
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