Fare reductions and a new schedule led to more trips on Tampa Bay’s Cross-Bay Ferry, and now it looks like the service may be here to stay.
That’s according to former Hillsborough County Commissioner and Tampa mayoral candidate Ed Turanchik, who sent out a press release saying that a Tuesday announcement would be about “permanent ferry service.”
Turanchik is now a policy adviser for the ferry operator, which runs the 50-minute ferry between Tampa’s Florida Aquarium and the Vinoy Basin in St. Petersburg between November and April.
In October, officials announced that tickets to ride would cost adults $8, which is $2 less than during the ferry’s first season two years ago. Kids ages five to 18 rode for just $3, and rides cost just $5 for seniors, college students, and active or retired members of the military. Children under four years old rode for free. The service also changed its hours to run Tuesday through Sunday and include later departure times, which gave passengers the ability have dinner across the bay.
Revenue from the service was shared between Hillsborough and Pinellas county governments plus those of Tampa and St. Petersburg. Data from ferry’s operator, HMS Ferries, said that more than 23,000 tickets were sold between November 1 and January 1, which is a 40% increase from the first season in 2016.
Turanchik would not tell the Tampa Bay Times whether or not the service will keep running past the proposed end of season at the end of this month and encouraged a reporter to “just come” to the announcement set for 2 p.m. today behind the Florida Aquarium.
We’ll update this post when the new release goes out.
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This article appears in Apr 11-18, 2019.