Ferry travel tips from WSF
Published 3:34 pm Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Washington State Ferries offered the following suggestions for ferry travel this summer.
• We encourage drive-up vehicles for people not able to get a reservation. In addition to our reserved vehicles, on average we are able to load 20-30 drive-up vehicles on each sailing due to the 10 percent standby + reservation holders who don’t show for their reserved sailing.
• We ask that reservation holders arrive at least 45 minutes prior to their sailing during the expected heavy traffic for the 4th of July weekend. Customers arriving less than 30 minutes may forfeit their reservation and be placed in the standby lane.· Reservation holders who arrive at the terminal for a different sailing than the one they reserved will have their reservation redeemed and they will be staged in the standby lane. We will not be able to guarantee them a space on the sailing they originally reserved.
• Only make a reservation for a vehicle over 7’2 if your vehicle is actually over 7’2. We have seen some SJI Facebook blogs telling people to book a tall reservation when there are no regular height reservations available. The tall space is needed by those commercial vehicles who transport goods like groceries, provide services like construction vehicles, and over the holiday by motorhomes and folks with bicycles/racks. If regular height vehicles begin reserving this space, then businesses will find it harder to provide products and services to your community, and visitors find it harder to travel, which hurts local businesses.
• Please only make a reservation for those trips that you intend to take. We are seeing some people making multiple reservations when they don’t know when they are going to travel and cancelling unneeded reservations by 5 p.m. the day before. This takes space away from locals and tourists who need a guaranteed space.
• Drive-up vehicles are encouraged for the July 4th weekend, and in fact approximately 20-30 drive-up vehicles are loaded on each sailing.
