(The Center Square) – Washington state ferry riders will have to dig a little deeper into their wallets later this year.
The Washington State Transportation Commission on Wednesday approved an additional 3% fare increase for vehicle and passenger fares, effective Oct. 1, 2025, and May 1, 2026, to meet the Legislature’s $408.8 million revenue target for the 2025-27 biennium.
The summer peak season surcharge on vehicle fares will rise to 35% on all routes starting May 2026, matching the San Juan Island-Anacortes route rate.
Commission Chair Debbie Young said the rate hikes were necessary, if unpleasant.
“While it’s appropriate for us to enact this because it was directly enacted into law by our Legislature, I just want to say it still doesn’t feel consistent with some of our goals – state goals and commission goals of advancing increased use of transit and reducing our carbon footprint and keeping transit affordable for people who don’t drive…so just wanted to state that,” she said.
Rep. Andrew Barkis, R-Olympia, the ranking minority member on the House Transportation Committee, was critical of the price hikes.
“It’s another cost passed down to the consumer for the ever-increasing cost of doing anything in Washington state,” he told The Center Square on Thursday.
The commission approved the 3% increase after proposing a smaller 2.5% hike in June.
“I’m not surprised that the increase was greater than what was originally anticipated,” Barkis said. “Until we start taking a hard look at the policies, the regulations, and all the other things driving these costs up in the state of Washington, this is going to be a common theme.”
Aaron Halbert, WSTC financial analyst, told commission members that ridership numbers are improving but still far below pre-pandemic levels.
“Looking ahead to 2025-2027, WSF is estimating about 40.6 million riders, which would be about a 2.3 million rider improvement from the [previous] biennium,” he said.
Young asked when WSF expects to return to 2019 ridership levels.
“We’re still on an upward trajectory to reach that; however, there’s been a lot of impacts from ridership behavior,” WSF Acting Deputy Director of Finance and Administration Siri Olson replied. “There’s a lot more remote workers; people aren’t traveling [nearly] as much to work, so there’s just a lot of ridership behavior that has changed.”
Another commission member noted that 23.4 million people rode Washington ferries in 2019.
“So we’re out to 2035 before we get to that?” asked Young about a graph shown by presenters depicting a very slow increase in ridership over the next 10 years, even as WSF returns to full operation with vessels coming back into service.
“People see the ferries as a tourist destination or something that you go and enjoy an afternoon, and ride across the beautiful Puget Sound. But what people have to remember is that it is a highway system. It is part of the state highway system, and there are people [who] every day rely on that ferry to get to and from the islands and back,” noted.
The current fare for a round-trip ride between Seattle and Bainbridge Island for a passenger car is $36.40. That rate goes up more than a dollar on Oct 1 with the increase and another $1.12 on May 1, 2026.
A round-trip ferry ride from Anacortes to Friday Harbor costs $64.35 for a passenger car. The 3% increase will increase the price by another $1.93 as of Oct. 1 and climb another $1.99 on May 1, 2026.
“My goal and hope is that we have a larger conversation between the Legislature, the executive branch, and also the Department of Transportation ferries division, to really look at where we’re going with this,” Barkis said. “It’s time to have kind of a reset in my opinion and to move away from what [former] Gov. [Jay] Inslee horrifically put us on course with for decisions to electrify the fleet.”
The commission also voted to repeal toll exemptions for publicly and privately operated transit buses, vans, and rideshare vehicles on tolled bridges, in accordance with a legislative mandate. The toll exemption for transit will go into effect on Oct. 1 and apply only to the State Route 520 bridge and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Current toll exemptions offered to transit vehicles on the Express Toll Lane system and the State Route 99 tunnel will remain in effect.
