Atlantic Basin Picked as Red Hook Dock for Citywide Ferry Service

Pictured: the Red Hook ferry dock. Images courtesy of the NYEDC

RED HOOK, BROOKLYN — The city has selected Atlantic Basin as Red Hook’s docking site for the Citywide Ferry Service set to launch next summer.

The dock’s location, situated near the intersection of Conover Street and Pioneer Street, will be easily accessible to 6,000 individuals that live within a half-mile, the city says, a radius that includes the Red Hook Houses.

The ferry will dock at four other Brooklyn stops: Pier 1 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, at the Brooklyn Army Terminal on the pier's north side, and in Bay Ridge at the American Veterans Memorial Pier. The ferry will also service Queens, and will connect both boroughs to the East Side of Manhattan.

The city says that it will take about 10 minutes to travel from Red Hook to Pier 6, another 7 minutes to travel from there to Pier 1, and 7 more minutes to travel from Pier 1 to the ferry’s dock at Pier 11 near Wall Street in Manhattan.

The ferry system will create 155 new jobs paying $15 per hour, the city says, with at least some hiring going through the city’s WorkForce1 job training program.

Each ferry ride will cost the same as an MTA trip, while the boats will have wifi and will be accessible to those with disabilities.

A rendering of one of the Citywide Ferry Service's ships

In March, California-based Hornblower Cruises won the contract to operate the ferry system.

At the time, New York Water Taxi, which operates a variety of tourist and transit-oriented boats, said it would go out of business if its bid wasn’t chosen, stating that it couldn't compete “in a market where the city subsidizes...competitors and promotes the Staten Island Ferry as a free service to see the Statue of Liberty."

The company hasn’t made a similar claim since, however, and on Wednesday, vice-president Peter Ebright told Patch he was “increasingly confident” the business would remain solvent.

“We stand by our original comments,” Ebright said, “but we’re looking at any range of options, from partnerships to a different configuration of the company. Nothing is off the table in terms of what we are considering.”

Here’s a full list of ferry routes and commuting times, as previously reported by Patch:

Routes

• Rockaway, South Brooklyn and Astoria routes scheduled to launch in 2017.
• Rockaway route will connect to the Brooklyn Army Terminal and Wall Street.
• Astoria route will connect to Astoria, Roosevelt Island (Cornell Tech), Long Island City, East 34th Street and Wall Street.
• South Brooklyn route will connect Bay Ridge, Brooklyn Army Terminal, Red Hook, Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1 and Pier 6, and Wall Street, with an optional link to Governors Island.
• Soundview and Lower East Side routes to launch in 2018.
• Routes from Coney Island and Stapleton on Staten Island are in planning stages for future expansion.
• Combined routes will cover over 60 miles of waterway.
• Over half a million New Yorkers live within a half-mile of one of the 21 Citywide Ferry landings, including 15,000 families living in NYCHA developments.

Commuting Times

• Rockaway to Wall Street (1 stop): Approximately 1 hour
• Astoria to E 34th Street (2 stops): Approximately 22 minutes
• Astoria to Wall Street (3 stops): Approximately 38 minutes
• Soundview to Wall Street (2 stops): Approximately 43 minutes
• Bay Ridge to Wall Street (4 stops): Approximately 48 minutes