I cover mostly military topics here at the LI Blog per my charter but on occasion I cover other topics.
The Washington State ferry system is in tatters.
It continues to get worse barely a week into the new year:
Washington State Ferries needs 17 boats to operate at full capacity, but only 14 are currently in service, forcing reduced schedules on three critical routes as the aging fleet faces mounting mechanical problems.
The troubled start to 2026 began New Year’s Day when a propeller blade broke off the 57-year-old Walla Walla during a Seattle-Bremerton crossing.
The problems continued through the first week of January. On Jan. 2, the Kittitas was pulled from the Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth route after employees discovered damage to an oil seal in the vessel’s engine room. The following day, the Tacoma was taken off the Seattle-Bainbridge run due to an oil tube issue causing high shaft bearing temperatures.
As a professional engineer, the “green energy” crusade has set scientific civilization back by generations due to the reproducibility crisis, rise of scientism and the pursuit of concurrent technology which is the creation of sophisticated vehicles without having the final and tested technology complete. The battery-driven utopitards have done this with vehicles of every kind. We’re most familiar with cars but the disease vector has also affected maritime shipping.
The state of Washington has been on the verge of fiscal implosion thanks to the woketopia cargo cult dominating the cities and the ferry crisis is part and parcel of the nonsense starting to influence ship building. The genius’ at the top of the Democratic dominated Evergreen (how appropriate) state have deferred maintenance on all state ferries and the inevitability of more expensive maintenance as a result of not doing the necessary preventative outfitting is coming home to roost with seven ferries deadlined.
According to the Seattle Times, seven of Washington State Ferries’ 21 vessels are currently out of service, leaving commuters with canceled sailings, reduced schedules, and pandemic-era service levels on critical routes. This crisis was built—slowly, expensively, and predictably—by Democratic leaders who prioritized performative climate signaling and futuristic press releases over the boring but essential work of maintaining and replacing ships that actually run.
For years, Democrats obsessed over battery-powered and hybrid-electric ferries, pouring time and money into experimental conversions while the existing fleet aged into disrepair. The state’s ferries average more than 40 years old. Propellers sheared off, shafts overheated and engines failed. None of this is shocking when hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance were deferred while politicians chased a green legacy.
Washington State Ferries (WSF) recently experienced issues with its first hybrid-electric ferry, the
M/V Wenatchee, shortly after its conversion, with a temporary motor shutdown in August 2025 linked to unstable control system communication wires, though crews worked to resolve it, and it returned to service in November 2025 after further fixes for a different minor switch issue, highlighting challenges in integrating new electric systems while maintaining reliable service
The Wenatchee conversion is a perfect symbol of the dysfunction. What was pitched as a roughly $50 million, one-year project ballooned to $86 million and dragged on for nearly two years, according to the Seattle Times’ reporting. During that time, the state lost capacity it couldn’t afford to lose. Even now, that hybrid vessel has already spent significant time out of service.
Governors Jay Inslee and Bob Ferguson insist electrification remains the future, with a projected $6.2 billion price tag by 2040. That might be a worthy long-term conversation. But it’s irrelevant when today’s ferries can’t reliably make it across Puget Sound.
So double the time and nearly twice the cost, no one took into account several items: loiter time for recharging the batteries, the seaworthiness and safety of battery technology in salt- and brackish water.
Rantz: Democrats chased green ferries while a third of its fleet fell apart
