NYC Reboots Staten Island to Brooklyn Ferry, Cutting Commutes and Reviving a Century-Old Link

New York’s attempt to reconnect Staten Island and Brooklyn by ferry is a modest, practical gesture—one that reflects the city’s evolving approach to moving people across water, and the challenge of integrating disparate boroughs.

On a drizzly December morning, the sight of a freshly painted ferry embarking from St. George for Bay Ridge is an echo, not a novelty. The new NYC Ferry route—restoring a long-severed aquatic artery between Staten Island and Brooklyn—marks a deliberate step backward to a more nautical age, as well as a cautious advance toward more flexible commuting across the city.

As of December 8th, the Economic Development Corporation, which operates the NYC Ferry, has introduced a new branch of the recently minted St. George line with service to the American Veterans Memorial Pier at Bay Ridge. From there, the route threads together Brooklyn Bridge Park and Pier 11 in Manhattan, fusing two boroughs that, until the mid-1960s, were more easily traversed by water than by any land crossing.

The old 69th Street ferry, which began its run in 1912 and ceased with the 1964 opening of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, earned the blue-collar sobriquet “The Short Way to New Jersey.” Its demise left Staten Islanders far more dependent on road and rail links. The new route cannot claim to offer anything as bold as a silver bullet for the city’s transit malaise, but it does create options: eleven minutes from St. George to Bay Ridge, at $4.50 a ride—a price notably higher than the subway, but with aquatic ambience and skyline views thrown in gratis.

For New Yorkers—for whom time is often more precious than money—the compressed journey time may prove alluring, especially compared with the testy sprawl of southbound express buses or the circuitous trek via subway. The ferry’s schedule is less clement: boats will run every 37 minutes during peak hours, and service intervals stretch to 50 minutes in the dead of the day. Still, for commuters who reliably miss the Brooklyn-bound express undergirding the city, the odds may not seem so puny.

The Economic Development Corporation’s gambit is less about mass adoption than niche connection. Staten Island, often treated as the city’s neglected archipelago, has long pined for gentler, speedier links to the rest of New York. Yet there are costs: the $4.50 single fare is a substantial premium over the subway’s $2.90, with limited multi-ride discounts for regulars. Unlike the subway or buses, the ferry is not integrated into the city’s MetroCard or OMNY straphanger ecosystem—yet another reminder that New York’s transit patchwork persists, despite two centuries’ worth of attempts to sew it together.

City planners, we suspect, hope to lure not just harried commuters but also the leisure class, eager for an outing to Brooklyn Bridge Park or Wall Street’s piers. A two-day unlimited ticket at $15 may appeal to those who treat commuting as an experience, not a grim economic necessity. The ferry’s resurgence comes at a time when real estate along the waterfront has become more coveted, and when the city has rediscovered old, watery edges as sites of urban renewal.

Beyond the surface, the ferry’s revival gestures toward a shift in New York’s economic geometry. The city has built its modern identity on inter-borough connections—bridges, tunnels, subways. Yet the ferry, for all its novelty, is a nod to the city’s roots, when water, not rails, was the chief vector of commerce and movement. That this route has been revived five decades after its abandonment says as much about the constraints of existing infrastructure as it does about nostalgia.

Still, the ferry’s capacity to transform transit for Staten Islanders should not be overstated. The city’s own schedule projects headways that could test even the most patient commuter’s fortitude. And the lack of fare integration stymies seamless transfers to other forms of public transit. The current fare structure may price out lower-income residents in boroughs already grappling with rent inflation and stagnant wages, muting the ferry’s promise of inclusive mobility.

Modest progress, practical symbol

Nationally, cities from Seattle to San Francisco are seeking to reclaim their waterfronts, launching ferry routes to ease traffic or to tout their sustainability. New York’s latest foray is smaller in ambition, but not in symbolism: after decades of waterfront neglect and post-industrial malaise, the city tiptoes—rather than gambols—back toward the water. Compared with London’s Thames Clippers or Sydney’s ferries, New York’s system remains distinctly supplemental, not central, to the way millions get about.

The economic logic is equivocal. Ferries are capital-intensive, weather-dependent, and notoriously costly per passenger compared to rail or road options. Yet, as the city’s density increases and congestion gnaws at productivity, even modest investments in multi-modal transport may prove a prudent hedge. Resurrecting old maritime links is hardly buccaneering, but it reveals a municipal willingness to experiment, if only incrementally.

If nothing else, the resurrection of the St. George–Bay Ridge route reflects a welcome pragmatism. Instead of grandiose, bond-busting infrastructure projects—think of Penn Station’s languishing renovation or the East Side Access—the ferry offers what New Yorkers have learned to prize: a small, tangible improvement, within reach, with expectations properly tempered. Whether it becomes a model for other routes, or another municipal indulgence with a tepid ridership, remains to be seen.

In our view, the city’s ferry revival is a buoyant gesture—a nod to both history and future. It may not portend radical transformation. But even a paltry reduction in travel time, or a gentler daily crossing, can improve life at the margin. And in a metropolis riven by congestion, and accustomed to chronic transit delays, such modest boons hint at a more nimble, if patchwork, approach to moving a crowded public from point A to B.

Whether the city’s fragmented array of transit options can be stitched into something resembling a coherent whole awaits political will and fiscal creativity—not just more boats. Until then, New Yorkers will have to be content with the occasional ferry ride: swift, scenic, and emblematic of a city continually trying to tie itself anew. ■