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Breakdown on the Alaska Marine Highway

City of Unalaska

Homer residents won’t have as much access to the ferry system this winter after budget cuts have slashed service.
The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities has published the draft schedule for the Alaska Marine Highway System for the upcoming winter. The ferry is proposed to visit Homer three days per week, connecting with Kodiak and Seldovia, starting in October.

All the other ports to the west and the communities in Prince William Sound would have to go without service all winter. And due to the scheduled maintenance on the Tustumena ferry, Homer won’t have any service at all from January 12 through April 30. That’s longer than last year, when the ferry was laid up from mid-Feburary through the end of March.

Aurah Landau, the public information officer for the Alaska Marine Highway System, says that the service this winter is designed to stay within budget limits. The ferry system’s budget took a $44 million cut after the Legislature’s budget and Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s vetoes.
“ This operating plan for this winter has been designed to stay within available funding levels but maximize revenue generation while providing service to communities and to run the system, we have to maintain regulatory and safety systems for the vessels,” said Landau.
The ferry will start out in Homer on Tuesdays before heading to Kodiak, Ouzinkie and Port Lions, then head back to Homer by Thursday. It will repeat the loop after that, ending the week in Homer on Sunday, Laundau said. For Homer, it’s fairly similar to service from last winter, with the main difference being that it only goes from Homer to Seldovia one day per week, on Thursdays. The ferry system administrators are in touch with the mayors and village leaders in the communities along the Alaska Peninsula that would not be receiving service this winter, she said.

The ferry system was a major target for the Dunleavy administration, with high overhead expenses and a relatively small user base compared to the highway road system. In his initial budget, Dunleavy proposed cutting about three-quarters of the ferry system’s budget with an eye toward privatizing it in the future; in its own budget, the Legislature moved to restore some of that funding. Overall, the $44 million cut is about 31 percent less than the ferry system’s budget in the 2019 budget.

Users can still comment on the draft winter schedule through July 26, with public teleconferences scheduled on July 29 at 1:30 p.m. Southcentral time. The draft schedule is available on the DOT website and at ferryalaska.gov under the Service Notices tab.

Landau said, “The schedule is in draft form right now. The marine highway system is taking comments on the schedule, however, the schedule is fiscally constrained. There are a lot of communities needing service.”

This story was reported by Elizabeth Earl in Juneau.

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Local News Alaska Marine Highway SystemM/V TustumenaAlaska Department of Transportation