WA ferries fare system restored, after outage brought hours of delays

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Washington State Ferries restored its electronic fare collection system Thursday after a systemwide outage caused backups at terminals around Puget Sound.

Technology staff rebooted the system late Thursday morning after identifying a technical glitch. That apparently fixed the issue.

The cause of the outage, which began just before 5 a.m., is under investigation.

Over the hours when the system was down, staff wrote receipts by hand and recorded each transaction in a ledger. That information will now need to be transferred into WSF’s online databases.

Meantime, the ferry system is grappling with the usual headaches that come with juggling an aging fleet. The ferry Kitsap has been pulled in and out of service over the last couple of days because of a stubborn issue with its transmission, said spokesperson Ian Sterling. It was back in service Thursday.

The Kaleetan had to be removed from service Wednesday, but returned Thursday morning. And the ferry Issaquah was experiencing mechanical issues Thursday morning and was out of service in Clinton, on Whidbey Island, but crews were able to return it to service by midday. Spokesperson Diane Rhodes couldn’t provide details on the problems with those boats.

After beginning the day with just 13 boats out of 21, the system was up to 15 by the afternoon, restoring two-boat service to the Seattle to Bainbridge and Edmonds to Kingston routes.

In his proposed 2024 supplemental budget, released Wednesday, Gov. Jay Inslee outlined a plan to spend millions to improve recruitment and supplement upgrades to the current fleet.