Overall traffic on Steamship Authority ferries is either flat or down slightly for the year, but in fact peak-season summer traffic on ferries to the Vineyard - both passenger and automobile traffic - has been healthy.

Also, the patchwork of parking lots in Falmouth and Bourne that are used to service boat line ferries to the Vineyard were never completely filled this summer, raising some question about the recent statements by the boat line general manager about the need to shift passenger traffic to New Bedford.

Traffic was down, but parking tickets were up. The weather was changeable; ditto for the restaurant and retail business. The wild blueberries were not so hot, but the fishing was great - lots of big bass and small bluefish, and on the full moon in July the fluke were so thick in some places you could practically throw out an old shoe and catch one.

These are the benchmarks of the summer of 2003, and as the official summer season came to a close this week, the people of the Vineyard took a quick look back, and most could agree on two things:

Fewer passengers rode the Steamship Authority ferries last year, continuing a trend under way since the turn of the millennium.

The boat line, which provides the only year-round passenger and vehicle service to the Islands, carried 2,609,835 passengers last year, off 63,324 or 2.4 per cent from 2004.

Passenger traffic on the Vineyard route fell 3.1 percent.

"This is the third year we've been down three per cent," Vineyard SSA governor Marc Hanover said yesterday. "There are more people living here, fewer people visiting."

Passenger traffic to the Vineyard on Steamship Authority ferries fell to its lowest level in more than a decade in March, more than 11 per cent below that for the same month last year.

Not since 1997, said SSA general manager Wayne Lamson, had fewer people visited for the month. And it was not only passenger numbers which plunged. The number of trucks coming and going — another key indicator of economic activity — was down almost eight per cent on the previous March.