To the Editor:
This letter was addressed to Marc Hanover:
Mr. Davis left our children wandering the streets of Falmouth in the middle of the night; that is unforgivable. We may comprehend and accept all the breakdowns, but I do not understand or accept for one moment why our children are left wandering the streets of Falmouth in the middle of the night. Mr. Davis should be brutally aware that machines break, that schedules are not always met. He should also be aware that when the Steamship advertises that they are the “lifeline of the Island,” that they better act that way.
It should be no mystery that every night the bus rolls down the hill for the last boat. That every night someone could walk off that bus to get on the boat to go home. The Steamship sells tickets for the bus, the bus sells tickets for the boat. The bus and the boat are a partnership in transportation. It is time they damn well act like one. I’m no genius, but by God how hard is it to have a protocol that if the last bus is not at the boat 5 minutes to sailing, that the agent calls the bus and finds out how late it is.
Everyone on the boat knows it’s the last boat home, that’s right, Mr. Davis, LAST BOAT HOME, our home, our people, obviously not your people. Everyone on that boat is content to wait till we are all there; yes, we squirm in our seats, but we know that is the deal, we are Island people.
Mr. Hanover, you need to explain to Mr. Davis that his job is to provide safe and reliable transportation to our Island. His job is to maintain a lifeline; if he cannot do that you need to show him the door, and if you cannot do that, we need to show you the door.
A lot of the Steamship’s problems can be attributable to mechanical faults — not this incident, this is all a management decision, or lack thereof.
You can screw up a lot. Leaving our children in the street? That cannot not be tolerated.
John Packer
Vineyard Haven
This is a no brainer even the airlines will wait for passengers that are running late because of their connecting plane running behind. They bus driver can daily radio in that they are running late and give an approximate time of arrival and steamship cam make a loud speaker announcement they they are holding the ship for the bus because it is the last ship .
Unfortunately ,many islanders have missed that last ship and been stranded but if the bus is scheduled to arrive before ship is due to depart and gets delayed they need to confer with each other.
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