Posted: 09 November 2008 at 9:15am | IP Logged

A Multi-Ferryous BB1500

Part 1 (history)

Ahh, ferries.

Stick with me, this winds up being about a bike ride.  Well, next post anyway.

Ferries have been around since the first time a guy with a raft and a pole figured out he could make some drinking money hauling folks from one shore to another.

Ferries nowadays, the inland variety anyway, are specialized barges - basically just a floating platform with some sort of engine attached.  The largest of them will accommodate 3 lanes of cars, maybe 6 or 7 cars per lane.  The smallest will squeeze just a couple of cars on their narrow deck.. 

The ones on rivers big enough to support commercial barge traffic usually have a serious engine of some sort, many with what looks like a modified tugboat attached.  The little ferries might just have a small outboard motor to shove the barge a couple dozen yards across a stream.

Their decks surfaces are sometimes tricky for motorcycles, with raised bits or lowered areas.  They can get quite slippery, with the water and slime tracked onto them by car tires.  Riding on and off can be quite steep as well, intimidating to inexperienced riders.  But it will seem easy after the first couple, though you must remain vigilant about the deck and where you put your foot down.

Some ferries are operated by the state or local government, some privately.  And many of the private ones are contracted or subsidized either by the state, or by some local “Ferry Authority” taxing district

The rapid spread and growth of the U.S. population in the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries brought on the heyday of American inland ferries.  Henry Ford kicked that into high gear with the Model T, making it possible for the average Joe to haul his carcass across a whole time zone in one day.

An expanding population with increasing ability to travel far and fast wanted to get to those far places - fast. But their desire was foiled by all those ribbons of water - obstacles their fathers had managed easily on single horsepower hooved transportation. After all, that which doesn’t float or swim has to find a way around.

Inland ferries followed the demand, slowly expanding from the most important roads to less important, more obscure roads, until economic equilibrium was met. Ferries must have seemed ubiquitous to travelers back in the day, a key part of many journeys.

But the same demand that spawned so many ferries led later to the bridges that killed them off - one by one - starting with the heaviest used, best known ferries and working down the list.  In the last century inland ferries have slid from ubiquity to rarity – now teetering on the brink of extinction.

Only the least used, least known of these ferries remain. They exist only in the few places where there is enough demand to support them, but not enough to justify a bridge. A precipitous position. In the year since I first started thinking about this ride, two of the 18 ferries in my original plan have shut down – no longer economically viable.

There is something special, something indefinable about the places served by these gems of the back roads. You arrive via highways drawn in the thinnest blue lines on roadmaps. Sometimes even the dreaded dashed brown lines. These are roads where the people and sights and sounds smack of Americana more satisfying than the interstate variety. This is the real country – and well worth riding.

Which is what led me to go dance with the ferries.

- next - Genesis

Posted: 09 November 2008 at 11:49am | IP Logged

• Only ferries open to the public, and primarily engaged in carrying passenger vehicles.
• All crossings during the normal operating schedule (no special off-hours crossings that wouldn’t be available to other riders.)
• Each ferry must actually be crossed, and only once during the ride.
  

Posted: 10 November 2008 at 5:24am | IP Logged

Steve Jones wrote: Ferries are odd in that many of them are quite well hidden, even on Google. Finding good sources of information on them was very time consuming.

So expand on this a little for us, what are the resources you used to locate the various ferries?

Posted: 10 November 2008 at 6:11am | IP Logged

Vehicular Toll Ferries in the United States

US-Flag Ferries, Publicly Owned

US-Flag Ferries, Privately Owned

Giant PDF wthl lots of data

North America's Inland Auto-Ferries

Canada Ferry Links

LaDOTD: Ferry Status

New Brunswick Ferries

NC DOT Ferries

WA Ferries

United States Ferry Map

MO DOT Ferries