NYC Ferry increases service to highest level since launch of current system

There’s good news for riders when NYC Ferry’s spring 2018 schedules launch on Monday 2 April 2018: service will increase to its highest level since the current four-route system launched last August.

• Overall: The spring 2018 schedules have 1,318 weekly journeys across the entire system, an increase of 244 journeys, or nearly a quarter (23%), over winter 2018 timetables.
• Weekends: Riders will see more frequent service and longer service hours across the system on weekends. There will be 42 more journeys citywide each Saturday and Sunday, an increase of 41%. Three routes — Astoria (AST), Rockaway (RW), and South Brooklyn (SB) — will have earlier service on weekends, while the start of service on the East River (ER) route remains approximately the same. But riders on all four routes will see later last journeys on weekends: 15 minutes later on AST, ER, and SB and a full half hour later on RW. AST, RW, and SB will have hourly service all day on weekends, while Saturday and Sunday frequencies on ER will be every 45 minutes early in the morning and later in the evening, with 30-minute headways in the middle of the day.
• Weekdays: Weekday service will increase by about a fifth across the system. Start times on all routes remain approximately the same, though last journeys to Pier 11/Wall Street will be between 10 and 30 minutes later. The last outbound journey on AST will be 15 minutes later, while on ER it will be 5 minutes earlier.

Of note, the partial uptown journey on ER early weekday mornings that has appeared on the last several timetables has been eliminated. (I have never included this partial journey in my analyses of NYC Ferry’s service changes.)

Headways

Service frequencies in minutes for each route on the spring 2018 schedules:

Changes over time

Now that we’ve had four rounds of NYC Ferry timetables we can start to chart the service levels and track the changes over time:

Data

Here are all the data on service levels for the NYC Ferry’s spring 2018 schedules.