SSA facing scrutiny over ferry notifications

Board and Port Council members are pushing for better and more timely communication with the traveling public.

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Vineyard officials are pressuring Steamship Authority staff to improve communication to passengers. —MV Times

Vineyard officials are pressuring Steamship Authority staff to better communicate with the traveling public when it comes to notifications about canceled ferry trips. 

Steamship Port Council members, board members, and the chair of the Dukes County Commissioners have outlined complaints that the public isn’t notified in a timely manner about cancellations, trip diversions, and other delays, which is leading to a lack of confidence in the ferry line.

“This has been the big problem over here,” Oak Bluffs councilor Joe Sollitto said during a Tuesday morning Port Council meeting. 

He illustrated the issue by pointing to a complaint raised on Facebook that has been widely circulated, and garnered Vineyarder criticisms against the Steamship Authority. In the post from September, Oak Bluffs resident Deborah Jones Koines detailed travel problems that complicated a routine trip to a veterinarian appointment when her ferry, an 8:15 am departure from Vineyard Haven, was canceled. Koines had received the text at 8:12 am from the Steamship Authority about the cancellation, and ended up waiting two hours in the standby line before she decided to return home. 

Sollitto said he had received the same text about the canceled boat at 8:12 am that day. 

“Why wasn’t that text sent out earlier?” Sollitto said. “I got the same text at 8:12. There should be better communication, and that just proves the point.” 

Sollitto isn’t the only Islander pushing for more timely notifications for passengers. Tisbury councilor John Cahill said they’ve been making requests for better communication for “at least two years,” and notifications are still not reaching Islanders. 

“Right now, it’s embarrassing,” Cahill said. “Again, that we’re not making improvements from two years ago, when we addressed this face-to-face in a private meeting.” 

Outside the Port Council, Dukes County Commission chair Christine Todd — whose commission appoints the Vineyard’s representative to the Steamship Authority board — has also pointed to complaints made on social media. She said that the Steamship Board did well to have general manager Bob Davis step aside last month, but she is worried that the existing board — particularly representatives from Nantucket, Hyannis, and New Bedford — aren’t up to the task of bringing needed reforms to the ferry line. She also listed communication as a high priority for needed changes.

Jim Malkin, the Vineyard’s representative to the Steamship Authority board, reached this week, said the Steamship needs a protocol that delivers accurate and consistent messaging. “I have been saying for the past four years that the Steamship Authority needs to do a better job of communicating to the traveling public, specifically what is the status of trips, what is the status of people’s reservations, and alerting people in an accurate manner,” Malkin told the Times.

Malkin also said there were multiple parts to consider regarding how to better communicate. The Vineyard board representative thinks narrowing down a system to “one methodology of communication,” namely by phone, would be better than having several communication channels. That would allow travelers to look for the information in one place. 

Malkin also pointed to how the Steamship Authority is “very lacking” in its information technology infrastructure, which underlies the communication system. The outdated reservation system is still a few years out from being replaced, and the new website won’t be completed until that’s completed. 

The Steamship’s efforts to make improvements to communication have been ongoing since this spring, and are being spearheaded by shoreside operations director Alison Fletcher, whose department largely deals with the cancellations. 

Although the captain ultimately makes the decision on whether a vessel will sail, staff at the ticket offices notify the wider public by text and email about cancellations after information is relayed to them from workers at the ferry slips. 

On Tuesday, Vineyard Port Council members asked pointed questions of Steamship staff, asking who is responsible for communicating cancellations to the public, and whether enough funds were being allocated toward this task. 

Steamship Authority communications director Sean Driscoll — attempting to answer these questions — clarified for the Port Council that his department doesn’t determine the cancellation of trips. He said his department does put out information online when they know there’s a “systemic problem” that will cancel multiple vessels. 

An example is the Oct. 2 notification that nine of the freight ferry Sankaty’s trips were being canceled between Wednesday and Thursday due to a crew shortage. This information was posted on the ferry line’s website, and in six separate emails on Wednesday morning. 

Driscoll also pointed out that cancellations usually don’t happen until right before a ferry’s scheduled departure. 

“We don’t know in advance if a boat is going to have a mechanical problem,” Driscoll said. “We give, I think, as much notice as we are able to, because we’re trying to get that trip running until the last possible minute.” 

Sollitto pushed back, saying the vessel from the Sept. 26 cancellation never left Woods Hole to make the 6 am trip from Vineyard Haven. 

“So we knew it wasn’t going to make the quarter-past-eight trip,” he said. “I mean, that was obvious. That should have been put out at seven o’clock, not at 12 past eight.” 

There was also pushback over how the communications information was planned to be presented to the Port Council on Tuesday. 

Tisbury councilor Cahill said Sollitto had requested seeing the marketing and communications budget in its entirety, to understand how the money was being spent. The Steamship meeting packet shows a more general communications plan (e.g. social media posts and community outreach), and updates to “addressing technological pain points.” 

“What we would like to do is go back to our original request,” Cahill said. “What was the budget for last year? What was it spent on? And then we can talk about how we want to spend that money going forward in [Steamship Authority treasurer and comptroller Mark Rozum’s] new budget.”

Driscoll responded that funding that would be a part of the advertising budget, while time and money spent communicating issues would fall under “resource allocation,” not necessarily a budget line item. Still, the combination of the two can be presented, Driscoll said. 

“It involves multiple departments, mostly not my department, the things that we’re talking about,” Driscoll said. 

“I think you know in general what we’re asking, because we’ve asked it several times,” Cahill replied. “If you want, I can talk with you offline a little bit more, but we’re not doing a good job.”

Although there was more to discuss, the Port Council will revisit the topic during its next meeting in November, since the councilors had other obligations on Tuesday, and time was taken up by tech problems.

4 COMMENTS

  1. When is enough is enough the island community has to as a unit de improvements at steamship authority in all aspects of their operation. This is our lifeline to the mainland and it is not guaranteed. Please Islanders contact Dylan Fernandez, and speak your mind about how awful this authority is.

    • Serious question: What do you expect Dylan Fernandez to do about it? Get the Commonwealth involved? He’s been in office quite some time while this has been going on. I am honestly curious as to what you expect him to do now.

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