Commuters and town officials are protesting plans to suspend ferry service between Charlotte and Essex, New York, which many use daily to cross Lake Champlain.
Lake Champlain Transportation Co. announced last week that the route will close indefinitely on Jan. 4, attributing the suspension to dwindling ridership numbers due to the pandemic.
The suspension will whittle the company’s ferry routes across Lake Champlain down to just one, between Plattsburgh and Grand Isle.
The popular Burlington/Port Kent crossing remains closed “for the moment,” Lake Champlain Transportation says, and no timeline has been set for reopening.
Yet some say the Charlotte-Essex service is critical to many who commute to work or school by ferry, or use it to reach the University of Vermont Medical Center. On both sides of the lake, the decision has raised an outcry.
“This crossing serves a great many people for a great many reasons,” Essex town supervisor Ken Hughes wrote in a petition he started against the suspension, which had garnered more than 2,300 signatures by Monday.
“Closing it requires those individuals (some who are elderly, some who are health-compromised) to seek alternate routes or change their plans completely, which could be life-or-death decisions that they are making,” he said.
Comments on the petition describe the ramifications of the shutdown for commuters. Several say patients at UVM Medical Center rely on the ferry to obtain treatment.
“This ferry should be an essential service,” wrote one commenter, who reported being a nurse at the hospital who uses the ferry to commute.
In a statement to VTDigger, Lake Champlain Transportation said a “significant decrease in ridership as a result of the pandemic” led to the decision to close down the Charlotte route, and it wants to resume service “as soon as we are able.”
The company did not respond to several other inquiries on the matter.
Without the Charlotte-Essex ferry, commuters will be forced to take the Champlain Bridge, which is about 25 miles south of Essex, or cross the lake via the northern Grand Isle route.
In addition to providing commuter service, the ferry routes have long been an important driver of tourism and commerce on both sides of the lake.
“Economic viability for Essex County and the Adirondacks may see immediate negative impacts” as a result of the service slowdown, Hughes wrote in the petition.
Melinda Moulton, CEO of Main Street Landing, which owns office and retail space on Burlington’s waterfront, said she disagreed with keeping transport running as an economic strategy.
“Keeping Vermont safe is going to do more to open our economy than anything right now,” she said.
The Vermont Department of Health strongly advises against non-essential travel, and requires those who still do enter Vermont from out-of-state to quarantine.
Still, Moulton said, “I’m not somebody who needs [the ferry] to cross the lake to get home from a day at work.”
Vermont has lost other transport options since the onset of the pandemic. Amtrak service has not yet returned to the state, for instance, due partly to safety concerns given the pandemic, state officials have said.
However, construction is moving forward on a long-awaited Amtrak line that would run from New York City to the Burlington waterfront. At a Vermont Rail Council meeting Dec. 9, state rail and aviation director Dan Delabruere projected that project will be completed in the first quarter of 2022.
“I’m very happy to say I can see the finish line coming,” he said.
