SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Biden administration will issue $220 million in grants to modernize the country’s ferry systems, officials announced Thursday.

The grant program will focus on expanding ferry service in rural communities, helping them acquire modern ferries, including electric boats, and upgrading shore infrastructure to support low-emission ferry service, officials said.

Twelve ferry operators in the territory of American Somoa and the states of California, Washington, Alaska, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina will receive grants, said Nuria Fernandez, administrator of the Federal Transit Administration.

The grants “will help transit agencies around the country buy and retrofit vessels, upgrade terminals and modernize equipment,” she said during a news conference at San Francisco’s Ferry Building.

The San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority and the Golden Gate Ferry will receive about $22 million to retrofit two of their existing ferry floats in the cities of Alameda and San Francisco and replace the ferry landing at Sausalito Ferry Terminal.

Nuria Fernandez, Federal Transit Administration administrator, right, speaks with Seamus Murphy, Executive Director of San Francisco Bay Ferry, while touring a San Francisco Bay Ferry in San Francisco, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Jeff Chiu

The New York City Department of Transportation will receive nearly $7.5 million to build shoreside terminal infrastructure to enable rapid charging for vessels serving Governors Island, which is only accessible by ferry. The new charging system will reduce emissions, decrease maintenance costs and improve reliability for riders, officials said.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

The post Ferry operators across the nation to obtain $220M in federal grants to modernize fleets appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Biden administration will issue $220 million in grants to modernize the country’s ferry systems, officials announced Thursday.

The grant program will focus on expanding ferry service in rural communities, helping them acquire modern ferries, including electric boats, and upgrading shore infrastructure to support low-emission ferry service, officials said.

Twelve ferry operators in the territory of American Somoa and the states of California, Washington, Alaska, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina will receive grants, said Nuria Fernandez, administrator of the Federal Transit Administration.

The grants “will help transit agencies around the country buy and retrofit vessels, upgrade terminals and modernize equipment,” she said during a news conference at San Francisco’s Ferry Building.

The San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority and the Golden Gate Ferry will receive about $22 million to retrofit two of their existing ferry floats in the cities of Alameda and San Francisco and replace the ferry landing at Sausalito Ferry Terminal.

The New York City Department of Transportation will receive nearly $7.5 million to build shoreside terminal infrastructure to enable rapid charging for vessels serving Governors Island, which is only accessible by ferry. The new charging system will reduce emissions, decrease maintenance costs and improve reliability for riders, officials said.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

The post Ferry operators across the nation to obtain $220M in federal grants to modernize fleets | Nationwide Information appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The clock tower rises above the Ferry Building, 2021, San Francisco.. Image © Noah Berger.

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https://www.archdaily.com/1009889/san-franciscos-love-affair-with-the-ferry-building

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

Can telling the story of one building tell a larger story about the city it’s a part of? That’s the central premise of John King’s engaging new book, Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities (W.W. Norton). The long-time urban design critic for the San Francisco Chronicle has written a brisk, lively history of this beloved edifice, which opened in 1898 and served as the principal gateway to the city until the emergence of the automobile (and the bridges that served them).

For decades it sat largely empty and neglected, cordoned off by the Embarcadero Freeway. After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the damaged highway was eventually removed, freeing up the Ferry Building, which was given new life as a transportation hub, food hall, and office building. Last week I talked to King about the genesis for the book, the terminal’s seminal importance to the city of San Francisco, and the threat it faces from rising sea levels.

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Martin C. Pedersen: You grew up in the Bay Area. You saw the building long before you had a professional interest in it. Do you have a lifelong connection to it? 

John King: Yes, but it didn’t register with me as a young person. I grew up in the East Bay, and San Francisco had already built the Embarcadero Freeway. It had modern buildings going up. It’s funny. There’s an SOM building for Alcoa that faces the water, a black-slab exoskeleton from the late ’60s. And I remember sitting as a kid in the backseat of my parents’ car, thinking: What a cool building. That’s what I remember noticing, not the Ferry Building.

The Ferry Building in the early 1950s. Image © San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

MCP: At that point, the Ferry Building was blocked by the highway.

JK: But I did see it, because I was coming over on the Bay Bridge. I went to college at UC Berkeley, and the Embarcadero Freeway was what you drove onto to go to the rock clubs in North Beach. So I have dim memories of the Ferry Building growing up. But then, in the early ’90s, when I started at the Chronicle, the Embarcadero Freeway had come down. Writing about planning and development, I got fascinated by this relic of a building, sitting there in sorry shape, a beat-up old building that happened to have a clock tower on top. But the location on the waterfront was remarkable, and encountering the building on foot made for great fun. At one point, then-Mayor Willie Brown proposed putting the de Young Art Museum into the Ferry Building.

MCP: I’m not sure that would’ve worked.

JK: There are so many ways that it wouldn’t have. This was more of a trial balloon. Here’s this building that everyone says is a treasure, yet no one had any idea what to do with it. When it was redone, I went to an event a few months before it opened, a big American Institute of Architects dinner, and I remember being knocked out at how incredible it was inside. That’s when it really registered on me: This isn’t just a historic building renovation. They were making the building a key part of San Francisco’s future.

MCP: The book’s argument is that you can tell the story of San Francisco through the history of this building.

JK: Very much so. I’m fascinated by how certain buildings go through changes that are emblematic of the larger forces in the city where they reside. When you look deeply at the Ferry Building, you can read the story of urban renewal, the story of shifting transportation patterns. You can discern the political changes and the damage done to American cities in the ’60s and ’70s. And just by looking at the tenants in the building, you can see the different kinds of social and cultural strands that have shaped the San Francisco of today. So many threads of history intersect with and lace through the building.

The Embarcadero Freeway, being dismantled; the scene outside the Ferry Building, 1991.. Image © Darius Aidala. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

MCP: You have a section at the end of the book where you talk about what makes an icon. There are a lot of old buildings, but they’re not all beloved. Why did this one travel so well over time?

JK: The iconicity of the building ties back to a lot of the original decisions around it, which were: “We’re going to build a building that marks the entry point into San Francisco from the rest of the country. Therefore, we want this to be at the most powerful place it can be, in terms of your perception of San Francisco.” The building was sited not only on the waterfront, but at the foot of Market Street, which was the city’s major boulevard. They put a big clock tower on it, because they wanted the building to be a visual marker. So if you’re coming into San Francisco from miles away, you see this landmark that gets bigger and bigger. That was conscious from the beginning.

The building extended out into the water, with the different ferry slips. There were these beautiful waiting rooms, and two incredible staircases that deposited you right at the foot of Market Street. The whole idea was a sequence of dramatic arrival and departure, and those physical elements endure today. And even though there’s a big skyline behind it, the building is still separate from other things. Lower Manhattan has lots of great old buildings, but they’re lost in the blur of other old and new buildings. The Woolworth Building is hard to see.

MCP: And at one point that was the tallest building in the world.

JK: Exactly. Whereas the Ferry Building, through all the changes, is still this dramatic imposing piece there. For many people, it was such a part of their lives during its heyday. That fueled their memories and affection—everybody had a story connected to it. And then in all the fights over how San Francisco would grow and how it would physically change, it was always an easy reference point to point to and say, “We have to save this, it represents what this city has been and should be. We can’t let it become just another American city.”

Bay Bridge under construction. Image © San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

MCP: The building is an engineering marvel that survived not one but two earthquakes. Talk about the research you did for that section of the book, because you’re not an engineer. Where did you get all the information about the pilings and the crazy stuff they did to shore it up?

JK: One of the things I most enjoyed about doing the book is, I’m a history major and love going through old documents. San Francisco has wonderful research institutions in it. The public library has a great history room. The California Historical Society has its research library here. I’d find articles describing the building, and see that it had 5,017 piles of Oregon pine. Then you dig through and discover that the first shipment was on a monster raft that capsized, and so they all floated away. Once I had the parameters of what I needed to know, I could look at the biennial reports from the board of State Harbor commissioners, which always had lengthy updates on how the project was going. Another remarkable document that was so important to me was this fat, two-volume scrapbook kept by the architect of the building, Arthur Paige Brown, and his family.

A diagram from the. Image © Engineering News, July 29, 1897

MCP: Oh, wow. How did you know that existed?

JK: I was searching the files at the California Historical Society, doing various keyword searches, and the scrapbook popped up. I thought, I gotta look at that! I plunge in and find out the family has compiled these two gigantic scrapbooks. There were articles from the first buildings he did in New York; anything that mentioned what he was doing, the family would clip and save it. One of those two volumes is pretty much just the Ferry Building. There were five competing newspapers. There was national interest. And I started reading all these stories, and they were such glimpses into the social norms of the era.

It’s striking how so much of the political discourse is no different than today. Every argument ever thrown against a big public infrastructure project was thrown against the Ferry Building: it’s a boondoggle,; it’s too expensive; it’s unsafe; the architect’s a crook. The same things get trotted out. And they were all there on this yellowing paper, well preserved. In one article, Brown says to a newspaper reporter, “My family keeps a scrapbook of every article about me,” and I’m reading it in the scrapbook! Then, once it opened, the building became such a popular cultural symbol of San Francisco that it appeared on dozens and dozens of postcards, and on so many brochures and magazines of the era.

MCP: That obviously shifted over time. At some point in the ’70s the Transamerica Building went up.

JK: As soon as the Golden Gate Bridge went up, that became the icon for San Francisco, for many good reasons, both functional and aesthetic.

MCP: Of course.

JK: With the Pyramid, it was pretty much, “Wow, we’re the only city in America that has a building like this!” Planners were so upset the building got approved that they subsequently downzoned everything around it. But in the process, they left it stranded at the end of the financial district. It gets the Ferry Building treatment of being an isolated object.

MCP: And that zoning holds today?

JK: Absolutely. The fear when the Pyramid went up was, “Oh, my god, these things are now going to march up Columbus Avenue into North Beach and Telegraph Hill and the waterfront.” So the planning that followed tamped down heights north of Washington Street. Now you’ve got the Transamerica Pyramid that’s 853 feet high, and across the street directly to the north, buildings ranging from two to four stories that are all from the late 1800s, early 1900s.

The Transamerica Pyramid, as seen from Columbus Avenue, 1971. Image © San Francisco Chronicle

MCP: How’s the Ferry Building doing post-covid?

JK: The Ferry Building, like everything else, was really set on its heels by the pandemic. It never quite closed, other than the initial shelter-in-place stuff. It never closed as nonessential, because it was deemed to be a transportation facility. The building had a lot of vacancies in 2020 and 2021, and then things came back in 2022. There are still vacancies now, but very few compared to what we see in other parts of the city.

MCP: It’s still a foodie mecca. Who goes there now, besides ferry passengers? Is it tourists or locals?

JK: It’s a really heartening mix. The tourists go there because people have all heard about it, but it’s also a place that younger people love. It’s got the farmer’s market, which by all accounts does as well as it did before the pandemic. The Ferry Building was never completely lost to the tourist zone the way that so many festival marketplaces from the ’70s and ’80s were—places that had their time and then either flopped or became tourist places. The Ferry Building is much more part of the workaday, experiential city than, say, Faneuil Hall in Boston or Navy Pier in Chicago.

Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, 2006.. Image © Michael Macor/ San Francisco Chronicle

MCP: The last chapters of the book are a coda about the future, and they involve sea-level rise and the threat it poses. You end a chapter giving the unofficial poet laureate of San Francisco, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the last word. “In 50 years,” he says, “it will all be underwater.” Do you share his view?

JK: I think Ferlinghetti was being poetic. That’s not going to happen. But the question of sea-level rise is real, and it’s one that every city that has reclaimed its industrial waterfront in dramatic ways will have to contend with.

, Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities / John King. Image Courtesy of John King

MCP: Which is almost every waterfront city.

JK: Exactly. They’re all facing aspects of this. If the sea level rises 3 feet, water would not wash into the Ferry Building every day. But once you start adding big storms and king tides, it really gets propulsive. There are parts of the Embarcadero that are even lower, and they’re already having real strain. Assuming that the projections are accurate—and not the most drastic ones—then the question becomes, looking out 50 or 60 years: How do you keep the waterfront functioning?

MCP: There are going to be hard decisions, all over the coast. There will be towns that will be defensible, others that probably won’t be defensible. 

JK: I think everyone wants to put it off by having study after study and then concluding, “Boy, someday this is gonna be bad!” That’s confronting San Francisco very starkly. Ferlinghetti may have been taking a little bit of poetic license, but some variation of that prognostication does face the city, the Embarcadero, and the Ferry Building.

MCP: This is an interestingly timed book. Fox News has decided that San Francisco is the poster child for Liberal City Dysfunction. We hear talk of “doom loops.” As a close observer of the city, where is San Francisco right now? What’s happening on the ground, separate from the propaganda?

JK: Oh, boy. It’s a city that in a lot of ways feels like it’s dusting itself off and getting back into the groove it once knew. I see more places reopening, more people in restaurants and bars. A lot of neighborhoods are in great shape. Recently I did a large piece about North Beach, where it honestly feels better than it did in 2019. That’s a place where the old precepts of urbanism, those strong bones, that urban DNA, came in handy in terms of adapting to the pandemic. The neighborhood had been seen as a little long in the tooth and getting too touristy. But it’s become a vibrant place again.

The post San Francisco’s Love Affair With the Ferry Constructing appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Biden administration will issue $220 million in grants to modernize the country’s ferry systems, officials…

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Biden administration will issue $220 million in grants to modernize the country’s ferry systems, officials announced Thursday.

The grant program will focus on expanding ferry service in rural communities, helping them acquire modern ferries, including electric boats, and upgrading shore infrastructure to support low-emission ferry service, officials said.

Twelve ferry operators in the territory of American Somoa and the states of California, Washington, Alaska, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina will receive grants, said Nuria Fernandez, administrator of the Federal Transit Administration.

The grants “will help transit agencies around the country buy and retrofit vessels, upgrade terminals and modernize equipment,” she said during a news conference at San Francisco’s Ferry Building.

The San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority and the Golden Gate Ferry will receive about $22 million to retrofit two of their existing ferry floats in the cities of Alameda and San Francisco and replace the ferry landing at Sausalito Ferry Terminal.

The New York City Department of Transportation will receive nearly $7.5 million to build shoreside terminal infrastructure to enable rapid charging for vessels serving Governors Island, which is only accessible by ferry. The new charging system will reduce emissions, decrease maintenance costs and improve reliability for riders, officials said.

Copyright
© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Biden administration will issue $200 million in grants to modernize the country’s ferry systems, officials announced Thursday.

The grant program will focus on expanding ferry service in rural communities, helping them acquire modern ferries, including electric boats, and upgrading shore infrastructure to support low-emission ferry service, officials said.

Twelve ferry operators in the territory of American Somoa and the states of California, Washington, Alaska, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina will receive grants, said Nuria Fernandez, administrator of the Federal Transit Administration.

“The grants help transit agencies make investments to increase reliability, improve connections to other modes of transportation, and bring older ferry systems into a state of good repair,” she said during a news conference at San Francisco’s Ferry Building.

The San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority will receive nearly $16 million to retrofit two of their existing ferry floats in the cities of Alameda and San Francisco. The New York City Department of Transportation will receive nearly $7.5 million to build shoreside terminal infrastructure to enable rapid charging for vessels serving Governors Island, which is only accessible by ferry. The new charging system will reduce emissions, decrease maintenance costs and improve reliability for riders, officials said.

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SAN FRANCISCO — The Port of San Francisco and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are planning on raising the iconic, historic Ferry Building by as much as seven feet.

The daring plan is an attempt to combat the impacts of sea level rise and extreme weather, both triggered by the climate change, and our warming planet.

How the SF Ferry Building will be raised

“We’re already seeing flooding on the Embarcadero. We know that the Bay is rising; we know that it will continue to rise”, explained Port of San Francisco Director Elaine Forbes.

Earlier this year, according to the United Nation-backed International Panel of Climate Change or IPCC for short, the planet is rapidly approaching a catastrophic threshold of heating. NOAA is tracking the melting of glaciers and ice sheets, as well as the rising ocean waters.

“Humanity is on thin ice, and that ice is melting fast,” said Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres in a recent address.

Port of San Francisco officials have held a series of public meetings with stakeholders along the 7.5 miles of bay coastline under the Port’s control. One neighborhood includes the Ferry Building.

The feedback was clear: those who work and/or live along the Embarcadero waterfront want to see the landmark Ferry Building remain on site and functioning. Currently, it is home to six ferry piers, used by millions of commuters and tourists each year. The Ferry Building also houses 44 different shops and restaurants as well as a world-famous Farmer’s Market.

And less known, it’s 2nd and 3rd floors have 190,000 square feet of offices and meeting spaces.

Port Engineer and member of the Water Resilience Team Steve Reel joined Juliette Goodrich in the CBS News Bay Area Virtual Set and in an exclusive report, demonstrated on how the Port and the U.S. Corps of Engineers are planning on raising the huge landmark.

The project will break ground in about a decade. The U.S. Corps will pick up 65% of the cost.

San Francisco’s Prop A — which was passed by 82.7% of voters in 2018 — authorized $425 million general obligation bonds that will partially fund the Waterfront Resilience Program. That includes funding improvements for earthquake safety of the three-mile long Embarcadero Seawall, near-term flood protection improvements, and planning for other long-term resilience.  

More from CBS News

Juliette Goodrich

Emmy award winning reporter and Bay Area native Juliette Goodrich joined KPIX 5 in 1997 and has performed a variety of anchoring and reporting assignments during her time with the station. She is currently the weekend nighttime anchor.

Read More

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Our beautiful city sits exactly opposite the Golden Gate Bridge, founded here for its unique position along the San Francisco Bay. Our gateway to the bay, the Berkeley Marina, has struggled for years with crumbling infrastructure and a deficient Marina Fund. But thanks to community advocacy, new investment from our City Council, and $15 million in state support, we have weathered the storm and are steadying the ship. And soon, the Berkeley Marina will enjoy a homecoming of a resource lost long ago: ferry service.

In 1926, our beloved Berkeley Pier was built for ferry service by the Golden Gate Ferry Company. A decade later, after the opening of the Bay Bridge, ferry service ended. The pier became the municipal fishing pier we knew and loved for years until it was closed in 2015 due to structural issues.  Replacement costs for the pier are estimated to range between $20 million and $55 million. Costs that, realistically, the city cannot bear alone.

The city of Berkeley has partnered with the Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA), the agency that operates the San Francisco Bay Ferry, to develop a plan to share costs and deliver a pier that serves dual purposes: public recreation and ferry service. At the culmination of a public engagement process that included focus groups, commission meetings, and community workshops, a preferred design concept was presented to the City Council in 2021.

Today, we write to announce that the vision of restoring ferry service at the Berkeley Marina has reached three major funding milestones this year:

These significant grants represent tremendous progress toward restoring the pier and bringing regional ferry transit back to Berkeley. The design and environmental review phase has already begun, putting us on track for groundbreaking in 2027.

Throughout the public engagement process, the project plan has evolved significantly to incorporate community feedback. The preferred design concept, known as “The Sword,” is designed to maximize recreation space on the pier. And the city is committed to implementing a proactive and robust transportation management strategy to respond to traffic and parking availability concerns. This could potentially include incorporating a paid parking program that charges ferry riders to park, discouraging spillover into non-ferry parking areas, and incentivizing carpooling and other non-driving modes of accessing the terminal, such as enhanced transit or shuttles, as well as bicycle and drop-off facilities.

Ferry transit meets a critical need for disaster preparedness in the region. Alongside the imminent transition to all-electric zero-emission ferries, this new transportation service will represent a major win for the environment and help alleviate congestion on the Bay Bridge. And importantly, ferry transit will increase commerce at waterfront businesses, bringing new revenues to the Marina Fund.

We are beginning an exciting new chapter for our waterfront, defined by a wave of reinvestment. Recent projects such as the Marina Roadway and South Cove improvements have been huge successes. Dock replacements and piling replacements are underway. Main channel dredging and Cesar Chavez Park path improvements are right around the corner. Hotel and restaurant revenues are recovering, and we are in exclusive negotiations with a prospective tenant at 199 Seawall Drive to reactivate the southern end of the marina.

Together, these improvements represent winds of change. While we are excited about this new potential, we remain committed to protecting the functions and character that make the Berkeley Marina a regionally loved site for nature and recreation. For the marina to thrive, we must strategically plan to address our infrastructure needs and demonstrate fiscal responsibility in managing the Marina Fund.

Thank you to all who have participated in the public processes shaping the Berkeley Pier & Ferry project. We urge you to join us as opportunities arise to advocate for regional and state resources for this transformative project for the marina. The future of our waterfront depends on it. We need all hands on deck!

Rigel Robinson is a Berkeley council member representing the city of Berkeley on the Alameda County Transportation Commission. Terry Taplin and Rashi Kesarwani are Berkeley council members representing the Berkeley Marina. Jesse Arreguin is the mayor of Berkeley.

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Written by

Heather Erwin

M/V Sea Change has docked at Pier 9 in San Francisco (Credit: San Francisco Bay Ferry)

The much-anticipated zero-emission ferry M/V Sea Change, powered by hydrogen fuel cell technology, arrived in San Francisco over the weekend, where it will prepare to begin carrying passengers later this year.

Launched in August 2021 at All American Marine in Bellingham, Washington, the Sea Change is a 70-foot catamaran ferry designed by Incat Crowther and equipped with a Zero Emissions Industries (ZEI) hydrogen fuel cell system that includes 360 kW Fuel cells from Cummins and 242 kg hydrogen storage tanks from Hexagon Purus and a 600 kW electric propulsion system from BAE Systems that includes 100 kWh lithium-ion battery storage from XALT. The Hornblower Group was responsible for the construction management.

The ferry is operated by San Francisco Bay Ferry, which operates 16 ships to California cities such as Oakland, Richmond and Vallejo. The operator is working with U.S. Coast Guard officials in the Bay Area to obtain the necessary inspections and certifications needed to operate the vessel.

“We are finalizing plans for a demonstration pilot operation of M/V Sea Change, the world’s first hydrogen-electric passenger ferry, in the Bay Area,” said Thomas Hall, spokesman for San Francisco Bay Ferry. “San Francisco Bay Ferry has the cleanest, high-speed, high-capacity ferry fleet in the United States, but we are committed to moving toward a zero-emissions future. We plan to deliver our first zero-emission battery-powered electric ferries in the next few years and we are very excited to learn more about the potential of hydrogen fuel cells through this demonstration pilot. We look forward to announcing more in the coming months, including a date when the public can ride this state-of-the-art ferry.”

Peculiarities of the ferry

The 75-passenger ferry received gaseous hydrogen in its 500 lb (242 kg) tanks on the upper deck. It uses this hydrogen in fuel cells, which generate electricity to power electric motors for distances of up to 300 nautical miles, and can reach speeds of up to 20 knots – similar capabilities to diesel-powered vessels – with the added benefits of no exhaust smoke or other emissions and very little are emitted vibrations and noises.

The Sea Change project is managed and funded by SWITCH Maritime, an impact investment firm building the first fleet of solely zero-carbon seagoing vessels for takeover by existing vessel owners and operators.

The Sea Change was the first ship in the larger zero-carbon ferry fleet that SWITCH planned to build in 2022 in partnership with local authorities and shipowners looking to transition to zero-carbon ships. In the transition, they were able to leverage state grant funds related to transportation decarbonization activities targeted by the landmark US Infrastructure Act.

While the Sea Change isn’t the world’s first hydrogen-powered ferry, it is the first to use gaseous hydrogen in a fuel cell, rather than burning liquid hydrogen in an internal combustion engine. Among the advantages of using gaseous hydrogen is its availability. This is underscored by the fact that the fuel loaded into Sea Change’s tanks contains green hydrogen, produced in California by an electrolyser powered by renewable solar energy, so there is no CO2 in the production of the fuel -Emissions occur.

ZEI, formerly Golden Gate Zero Emission Marine, is responsible for the design and development of the first-of-its-kind marine hydrogen and fuel cell system on the Sea Change, as well as the ship’s unique refueling system that allows for direct refueling of hydrogen trucks and was responsible for the successful regulatory approval of all hydrogen-related aspects on board.

ZEI is a hydrogen technology company that develops and sells turnkey hydrogen power systems, advanced fuel cell balancing of plant subsystems, refueling systems and proprietary safety systems for a range of applications.

Categories: Ferries, News, Passenger, Uncategorized
tags: All American Marine, Ferry, Hornblower Group, Incat Crowther, San Francisco Bay Ferry, Sea Change, Shipyard, ZEI

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A new zero-emission ferry powered by hydrogen fuel cell technology has arrived in San Francisco, where it will undergo sea trials and preparations to carry passengers later this year.

The 70-foot catamaran is believed to be the first commercial seagoing vessel in the United States to be powered entirely by hydrogen fuel cells, officials said. The boat is a key part of San Francisco Bay Ferry’s ambitious plan to replace a significant number of its polluting diesel ships with zero-emission watercraft by 2035.

“We know the future of ocean transportation is zero-emissions,” San Francisco Bay Ferry spokesman Thomas Hall said in an interview Monday. “We’re really pushing the limits.”

Known as the Sea Change, the aluminum catamaran can carry up to 75 passengers at a top speed of 15 knots, according to the California Air Resources Board, which has provided a $3 million grant to fund the project. The boat will have enough hydrogen storage capacity for two days of normal operation.

Fuel cells work like batteries, using chemical energy or hydrogen to generate electricity quietly and with minimal moving parts, according to the US Agency for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Hydrogen fuel cells emit only water and address a critical need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the environment.

Crews will begin training and outfitting Sea Change for passenger service in the coming weeks, Hall said. After being tested and inspected by the US Coast Guard, the ship will begin receiving passengers later this year.

The San Francisco Bay Ferry operates 16 ships to cities such as Oakland, Richmond and Vallejo.

The Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry, which transports tens of thousands of visitors annually from Tiburon to the island’s state park, recently announced that it will be converting to an electric-powered vessel next year.

“We are very excited that Angel Island will be the first of California’s short-haul ferries to be 100% zero emissions,” said Capt. Maggie McDonogh, owner and operator of the Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry.

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June 2, 2022

An assortment of dog cakes from Mishka Dog Boutique, which is opening a new location at the San Francisco Ferry Building this summer.

Blair Heagerty / SFGate

Change is afoot at the San Francisco Ferry Building. Following the recent news of Señor Sisig bringing Filipino fusion burritos to the waterfront marketplace, two new bakeries are also moving this summer.

Simurgh Bakery, which founder Hatice Yildiz started at farmers markets in the East Bay in 2017, is known for pistachio baklava and other Middle Eastern treats, such as bourek (savory hand pies), grape leaves, stuffed sun-dried eggplants and Turkish delight. This is Simurgh Bakery’s first brick-and-mortar location.

“When I was establishing Simurgh Bakery, I wanted to make baklava a popular and preferred dessert for special occasions by the broader Bay Area community,” Yildiz said in a press release. “… There could be no better place than the historic Ferry Building to fulfill this goal.”

The other bakery is a little different — it’s not for humans but for dogs. Mishka Dog Boutique, a San Francisco purveyor of fancy, organic dog cakes, will also be moving into the Ferry Building. In early 2020, an SFGATE editor’s dog gave the bakery’s chicken soufflé cake his seal of approval. The new Ferry Building location will be Mishka’s second — its first is in Pacific Heights. In addition to dog treats, the new store will also feature a dog “selfie zone” and canine outfits.

Fort Point Beer Company is also expanding its seating at the Ferry Building with a new outdoor beer garden at the front of the building.

Madeline Wells is a reporter for SFGATE covering food and drink in the Bay Area. She grew up in the Seattle area and received her BA in English and Media Studies from UC Berkeley. Prior to SFGATE, she was an associate editor at East Bay Express and freelance writer covering the Bay Area music scene. Email: madeline.wells@sfgate.com

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