Maryland officials react to new study deeming Chesapeake Bay ferry system ‘feasible’

MARYLAND – Local tourism officials are excited about what could be the first step toward a fully-functioning passenger ferry system across the Chesapeake Bay.

Five Maryland counties–Anne Arundel, Calvert, St. Mary’s, Somerset and Queen Anne’s have decided that they wanted to use the Chesapeake Bay as a link. They commissioned a study on the feasibility of a full-fledged passenger ferry system across the bay.

“We continue to refer to the Chesapeake Bay as a connector, not a divider, right? We want to use this to connect our communities, to provide access to the bay and the water for all residents of Maryland,” said Clint Sterling, Director of Recreation, Parks, and Tourism for Somerset County. “This will not be a study that sits on a shelf and collects dust, you know, there’s there’s plenty of those around. We’re going to use this as a living working document,  to drive our next steps, both in our locales and for the totality of the system.”

Sterling said now that the study has confirmed a ferry system is realistic, the immediate next step is for the counties of the consortium to decide what role they will play moving forward: “We’ve gone from sort of researchers and concept developers. And now, are we moving into sort of a pitch role? Are we going to become salespeople? Are we going to–you know–how do we define that?”

The study recommends a public-private partnership for the operation of a potential ferry system. It cited multiple other instances across the country of government subsidized ferries, something that State senator Mary Beth Carozza thinks is possible for Maryland. “From my conversations, I believe that there is support for this. I will be participating in those meetings to let those partners, whether they’re on the public side or the private side, know that they have a partner. I would work with them at the state level, but I also have to make sure that that support for that the consensus is building so we can be successful not only in Somerset County, but obviously in the other counties as well,” Senator Carozza said.

Sterling conceded that an ambitious project of this scale will always be difficult to pull off, and it will have its fair share of doubters: “We acknowledge the fact that there’s going to be skeptics about this. There are aspects of this project that I’ve been skeptical about. That’s why the studies are important. That’s why it’s important to get experts in the field to come and kind of answer your questions and to sort of give you real answers, you know, not just tell you what you want to hear.”

While officials are excited about the conclusions in the report, they acknowledge that the heart of the work still lies ahead.