Sunday, March 27, 2016

Visit Staten Island!

Staten Island offers lovely architecture, beautiful parks and fascinating museums. Thousands of tourists set foot on the island on warm sunny days. But as Joby Jacob and I discovered yesterday, there's a problem...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Because the ferry is priced at $0, tourist think that the destination of the ferry is also worth that much. (And there's the real or imagined time crunch too)

Ferry riding should require a MetroCard swipe, with free transfers to/from the bus, subway and SIR.

James Sinclair said...

Maybe they should extend the forced path so people have to leave the station to reboard? Inspiration can be taken from Carribean cruise ports. Theyve mastered the art of getting passengers to shop

The new Ferris wheel is an attempt to capture this crowd I guess

Cap'n Transit said...

Thanks, guys! I don't think either of those are necessary (although I wouldn't oppose charging a fare).

I've redone the video, because (as Joby noticed) the annotations weren't showing up on mobile. If you didn't see any annotations before, you might want to watch the new version!

The Amateur Transporter said...

From watching it, I'm not clear of your point. Are the bulk of people coming off and then getting on another ferry back to Manhattan? Or are they going to a parking lot or taxi stand?

Unknown said...

I think I'd compare this to Montmartre in Paris, where every day thousands of tourists take the funicular to see the church and the view of the city. But once they're done looking at the view there's a ton of restaurants within a block of the church that are easy to walk to. The staten island ferry terminal just doesn't look like it's right next to a cute walkable neighborhood from the inside. It looks like it's in the middle of a commuting hub.

Cap'n Transit said...

You got it, Seth! Our eyeball estimate was that eighty to ninety percent of the people who got off that ferry went right into the waiting room to get on the next ferry back.