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 biggest ferry system in the US, and we ought to begin appearing prefer it,” Steve Nevey wrote. “Collectively, let’s change into the usual of operational excellence in opposition to which each ferry system on this planet measures itself.”
Nevey is true to decide to transformation in a troubled transportation system that fails to encourage the boldness 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 folks 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 report of no fatalities resulting from crashes.
That just about modified in July 2022, when a longtime captain plowed the M/V Cathlamet into a bunch of pilings on the West Seattle dock, mangling the ferry. Passengers got here near severe damage as metal collapsed towards them. A federal investigation concluded the captain, Dave Cole, probably 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 notice.
The crash sidelined a ship in a thinly stretched fleet, additional tarnished the system’s status and value thousands and thousands of {dollars} — insurance coverage premiums alone rose 15.7% for all the system in 2024 partially due to the collision.
In the meantime, the state simply paid $8.5 million to settle a lawsuit by which ferry workers allowed a clearly intoxicated driver to depart a vessel and onto Whidbey Island, the place she killed two individuals after hitting their automobile head-on. Ferries’ deckhands mustn’t have allowed her to drive off, however with no Washington State Patrol trooper accessible 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 quite 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 damage.
These three occasions are reminders of the potential perils of working a system of lots of of sailings every day. Regardless of the monotony, workers members can not change into complacent or unwilling to boost the alarm earlier than issues go improper.
Nevey expressed to workers a need 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, quite 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, quite than a harbinger of extra calamity to return.
