Effort to expand ferry service on the Bay

If there's one thing everyone in the Bay Area can agree on, it's that traffic can be horrible.

Ferry service has slowly been expanding to try to relieve overcrowded BART trains and freeways, but there are complaints about that service too.

Back during in the golden age of ferries in the early 20th century there were dozens of ferry operators going to locations up and down the Bay moving millions of passengers a year.

Then the bridges were built and by the 1950's ferries were all but dead.

Ferry boats saw a resurgance after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake knocked down part of the Bay Bridge, but the service is nowhere near the levels of their heyday.

Where once there were 30 different ferry ports around the Bay, there are now just a handful between the city, Marin and East Bay.

Demand is up but service hasn't kept pace.

Today's ferries are often so crowded passengers at times are left standing on the dock because the few boats in service are full.

Ferry riders are a small part of the overall commute.

Muni carries 730,000 riders a day with BART servicing 430,000, while 270,000 vehicles cross the Bay Bridge every day.

But the San Francisco Bay Ferry carries just 9,600 passengers a day and the Golden Gate ferry just 8,200.

WETA, The Water Emergency Transportation Authority that oversees the San Francisco Bay Ferry service just opened a new $31 million operations and maintenance facility at Mare Island, a response to increased demand.

It's part of its effort to expand service, but that expansion has been too slow for many commuters.

Enter a new ferry service... called Prop SF.

"We're in it to improve people's lives," says James Jaber, the company founder.

He's now close to fulfilling his dream of opening up private ferry boats to the public.

"We're at a bottleneck with traffic and any other solution is a pretty long ways off," he told KTVU.

He wants to expand service to cities around the Bay that don't currently have it.

For instance a run from Berkeley to San Francisco in just ten minutes for about ten dollars.

"Our goal is to make it as inexpensive as possible so we can attract everybody."

There are also plans for an Emeryville to Redwood City run which he hopes to start in January.

He's also in talks with Contra Costa County officials and others.

"Hercules, Martinez, Benicia, Antioch, the Marina District in San Francisco."

Jaber currently uses a 41 foot long boat ready that can carry 36 passengers.

A larger one is now under construction near Seattle. It's 55 feet long and can whisk up to 48 passengers at almost 50 miles an hour.

Instead of costly and large ferry terminals Prop SF will operate from existing marinas using smaller and faster boats.

It's a small commuter revolution starting with only a few passengers... not the millions once moved by ferries in the early 20th century.

"I don't know about a million but I think we can certainly make a sizable impact on the commute once we get going. We want to grow methodically, carefully, and I think it's not unheard of to have 50 to 100 boats here in the next 5 to 10 years."

Jaber says he's cleared the regulatory hurdles necessary to open his boats to the public. The first ferry runs could begin as soon as January.