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The
Martha's Vineyard Times is a weekly publication.
May 19 - May 25, 2005 Edition
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Down to business The Martha's Vineyard Times May 19, 2005 Under new members, and with a new professional general manager, the Steamship Authority has begun to make changes that will improve the efficiency of its operations in the years ahead. These changes — including larger vessel capacities, reductions in over-manning, and a member-led determination to restrain the growth of labor costs — will not lead to rate reductions for traveling Islanders or their summer neighbors and guests. Almost certainly, they will not. But they will enlarge the seascape of choices available to SSA members and managers as they try to formulate a plan to provide convenient, economical, safe over-water travel service in the early part of this new century. Reflecting on changes that have coincided with his tenure as Vineyard member and with the change in leadership at Nantucket and in Falmouth and New Bedford, Marc Hanover told Times news editor Nelson Sigelman that boatline management is acting on the agenda set by the members, “which is to cut back and start saving money on payroll and start making the operation more efficient. That is what they have been charged with, and that is what they have been doing.” Mr. Hanover pointed to labor costs as an important element of any plan to streamline boatline operations, because payroll is a key, accounting as it does for nearly 70 cents of every dollar of expense. Efficiencies such as those discussed by the members last week will free SSA managers to make good decisions in the future. The purchase of the Cape and Islands Express Lines in 2001 is a prime example. By its action, the line extinguished a grandfathered, private competitor and gained control over future ferry service from a key mainland port. The plan was to offer high-speed SSA service between the New Bedford and the Vineyard. Shortsightedness and foolishness by former SSA leaders delayed that plan and wasted tens of thousands of dollars, but at last there is in place an SSA-licensed private, high-speed ferry service that promises to serve the Vineyard well. Mr. Hanover, the Vineyard member, understands the value of decisions like the Schamonchi purchase. “We paid for the route, not the boat, and I am glad we have the route. It is far more important than any boat that would be on it. We need to control these routes…. The route is generating income and will be for many years, because we own the route,” the Vineyard member told The Times this week. Islanders must hope that the members and the managers of the boatline will look for and discover other opportunities like this. We have argued for years without success, except for a brief, exhilarating flutter during J.B. Riggs Parker’s tenure as Vineyard member, for the careful development of a strategic plan that looks at transportation needs of Islanders and of the region, at finances, at organization and governance of the boatline, at trends and available technology. Such a plan, in the preparation of which members and boatline staff must play important roles but not be responsible for all the thinking, is vital to the future of the Steamship Authority and, by extension, to our future as well. And to implement such a plan, if it is ever accomplished, will require the freedom that comes with control of costs, modern equipment, technological advancements, more streamlined and disciplined decision making, and a firmer control of the market in which the SSA operates. The news from the meeting on Nantucket last week suggests that some of all this may yet be achievable. |
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