The long-debated idea of expanding ferry service in New Bedford got new support this week after the Steamship Authority’s general manager proclaimed his strong interest in turning the Whaling City into a full-fledged ferry port.
Alex Krsyka, who took over leadership of the Steamship in January, said Tuesday that he wanted to see New Bedford become a regular ferry destination like Hyannis, and was ready to dig into the potential of the idea.
“As long as I’m here, and [unless] somebody knocks me off my perch, that’s my goal: is to have service — full service — coming out of New Bedford,” Mr. Kryska said at the Steamship’s port council meeting. “Not just freight, but cars, passengers, the whole works, just like we have coming out of Hyannis.”
Mr. Kryska didn’t get into details on what an expansion of service could look like, but he was interested in studying the port, which now only has the Seastreak running fast ferries to the Vineyard and Nantucket, along with intermittent freight service.
Mr. Kryska’s comments Tuesday came as the port council was discussing traffic in Woods Hole and the much-discussed 5:30 a.m. ferry from the Falmouth village to Martha’s Vineyard. The early morning ferry has been a thorn in the side of some Woods Hole residents, who regularly file petitions with the Steamship Authority to reconsider the schedule in order to halt loud trucks rumbling through the neighborhood at 5 a.m.
New Bedford has often been held up by Woods Hole residents as a potential remedy to their traffic woes, and the Steamship Authority held a hearing on the early morning ferry in July on the latest petition.
Vineyard leaders have contended that the ferry, which is largely full of tractor trailers bringing supplies to the Island, is essential to keep businesses and life here running. The early call time also gets truck drivers on and off the Vineyard before the roads become clogged with traffic.
Oak Bluffs port council member Joe Sollitto also noted that Woods Hole Road is a major road on Cape Cod, not some small side street.
“State roads have traffic 24 hours a day. If it was a country road, I’d exactly agree with all the people in Woods Hole,” he said. “It’s not. They bought this property on a state road, state roads are busy, and there is traffic and there is noise on a state road.”
While talking about the proposed 2027 schedule Tuesday, Steamship staff recommended keeping the 5:30 a.m. ferry from Woods Hole to the Vineyard, but suggested limiting the 5:30 a.m. ferry from the Island to the mainland to smaller vehicles to alleviate some of the noise.
“Those trucks coming off the Island, the concern is they tend to be empty, so they bounce a little bit more going on the road,” Mr. Kryska said. “They just make more noise than a full truck coming the other way.”
While New Bedford is the least involved port in the Steamship Authority, its inclusion has been the subject of debate for decades and was a central point when the current iteration of the ferry line was created more than 60 years ago.
A precursor to the Steamship Authority formed in 1948, and, at the time, the ferry line was required to offer daily service to the Island from New Bedford. But when the service struggled to stay in the black, a battle broke out that resulted in New Bedford being cut out of ferry service under the 1960 Steamship Authority enabling act.
After that, all ferries to the Vineyard and Nantucket went through Woods Hole, and the Steamship was governed by a three-member board with representatives from the Islands and Falmouth.
About 40 years later, still bitter about being excised, New Bedford led a campaign to return to the Steamship board, and eventually the Whaling City and Barnstable, which had started service to Nantucket through Hyannis, were granted membership.
The Steamship Authority tried out a pilot freight program between the Vineyard and New Bedford in 2000. The ferry line contracted with a private company to provide two trips a day every weekday from May through October.
But after two years, the service was discontinued because it was financially unfeasible and the Steamship Authority was unable to secure an agreement with the city to use the state pier.
Since then, the idea of pushing tractor trailers off the Cape and to New Bedford has been studied, but never gained much traction.
In 2016, a feasibility study conducted by the Steamship found that freight service was possible to do, but it would cost millions to run and involve numerous complicated planning steps and operational changes.
The report concluded that building a freight terminal facility in New Bedford would cost between $10 million and $15 million. That was a cost that Steamship leadership didn’t have an interest in paying for at the time.
“The staff does not believe that the Steamship Authority should bear the cost of constructing or maintaining the freight ferry terminal in New Bedford that would be necessary to provide the service, or should otherwise subsidize the cost of the service,” the report read. “Nor should the Steamship Authority rate payers be responsible for the additional operation costs that will be necessary to provide freight service from New Bedford, when freight service can continue to be provided from Woods Hole.”
Since then, there have been some on-demand private freight carriers running from New Bedford. In 2024, the Steamship board signed off on 41 North Offshore’s plan to run a freight barge to the Island, and earlier this year Offshore Tug & Transportation inquired about expanding services to the Vineyard.
Seastreak has provided summer passenger service from New Bedford, and has tried to bring in winter commuter trips.
Mr. Kryska believed that now may be a good time to revisit expanding ferries from New Bedford and said he has been in discussions with Gordon Carr, the New Bedford port council member and head of the New Bedford port authority.
“I’ve been talking to Gordon quite a bit about New Bedford and the opportunities that we want to see there,” Mr. Kryska said Tuesday.
One step could be beefing up the existing Seastreak service in New Bedford so it would be similar to Hy-Line in Hyannis. Seastreak currently offers two roundtrip crossings in the fall to the Vineyard while Hy-Line has seven between Nantucket and Hyannis.
“That is the future,” Mr. Kryska said. “Unfortunately… for the next few years, we have to figure out how to be good neighbors in Woods Hole and do the best we can with Woods Hole because it’s going to take us a while to build out and build up New Bedford.”
Mr. Kryska’s comments drew some reaction during the meeting. Eric Dawicki, the Fairhaven port council member, lauded the sentiment.
“Bravo, Bravo, Bravo,” he said, while others seemed surprised by the strength of his words.
That New Bedford was being considered by leadership was music to Woods Hole residents’ ears, though Nat Trumbull, one of the leaders of the Woods Hole petitions, said he wanted more solid commitments.
“I appreciated what Alex Kryska said about launching New Bedford freight service,” Mr. Trumbull told the Gazette. “What is missing are details, including plans for Steamship staff to meet directly with [New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell]. A time frame with expected milestones is also missing.”
Mr. Kryksa said the next step would be to undertake a feasibility study to look at how freight, personal vehicles and passengers could come and go from New Bedford.
“We had some initial discussions with people there,” he said. “We need to formalize that plan and have a true feasibility study.”