Channeling Progress in Preservation

Two Historic Ferries in Connecticut to Keep Sailing

By Gwendolyn Purdom | Online Only | Sept. 8, 2011

Chester-Hadlyme Ferry

Credit: Courtesy of Lyme Public Hall Archives

Only weeks after Connecticut residents were told that two of the oldest continuously operating ferries in the country would be closed due to budget cuts, advocates for the Chester-Hadlyme and Rocky Hill-Glastonbury ferries breathed a sigh of relief: On August 18 the state Department of Transportation announced it would continue to fund and operate the services for at least two more years. DOT officials and preservationists agree there is still a long way to go to ensure the beloved service is protected indefinitely.

Ferry service across the Connecticut River has linked Rocky Hill and Glastonbury since 1655. Service between Chester and Hadlyme, 25 miles south, began in 1769. When news spread last year that the ferries would be on the chopping block due to a historic $4 billion budget deficit, residents of both communities sprang into action.

"It's a floating history lesson," says community organizer Humphrey Tyler of the ferry service. "While they are not the original ferries being pulled across the river carrying sacks of grain and the occasional oxen, they are a reminder for all of us as to how important the river was, not only as an avenue of commerce, but as a barrier to commerce. Two communities facing each other across the river had no way to communicate or trade unless there were these ferries."

In both Rocky Hill and Chester, residents formed grassroots action committees, task forces, and Facebook groups. Volunteers posted notices on library bulletin boards, garnered local media coverage, secured thousands of signatures on petitions, went door to door with flyers, and boarded the ferries to distribute surveys to passengers. Despite these efforts, the Department of Transporation issued a 30-day closure notice in early August, and the eight-person staff operating the ferries received their pink slips.

"We needed to come up with about $90 million worth of savings in the first fiscal year and then something along that number for the second fiscal year," says DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick, describing statewide cuts that affected hundreds of employees. "Basically, our goal was to keep the core of the department functioning and anything ancillary to those core functions was subject to change or elimination."

When state employees voted to approved a series of cost-cutting concessions weeks later, the state revoked both the closure notices and pink slips, announcing that both ferries would be funded through June 2013.

"People were relieved, but the really good thing that has come out of this is that people have come to the realization that this happens every couple of years," Wendy Miller, a Save the Chester-Hadlyme Ferry committee member, says.

Both Connecticut River crossings are near designated scenic highways (the Chester-Hadlyme Ferry is actually part of a designated scenic road) and, while they play a role in transportation, the Rocky Hill-Glastonbury ferry moves only about 17,000 vehicles annually, and the Chester-Hadlyme ferry about 32,000. Nearby bridges handle that volume of traffic each day, Kevin Nursick says.

The ferry services cost Connecticut about $500,000 per year, "a major operation loss that poses a problem," Nursick says. As the average Connecticut bridge is now more than 50 years old, aging infrastructure continues to be the priority for transportation funds. "We have more and more burdens placed on us and less and less resources to accomplish the job, so it is increasingly difficult for a state department of transportation to operate something that, from a transportation perspective, from an efficiency perspective, is troublesome…from a historic perspective or from a community perspective, it's a little bit different, and that's where the balancing act comes in."

Proposals presented at planning meetings held in both communities in the weeks following the DOT's announcement have included everything from incorporating advertising on ferry boats, to privatizing the ferries, transferring authority to the Department of Tourism, raising fares, or extending hours of operation to increase ridership . DOT officials have asked community members to work with them to develop a sustainable solution moving forward.

"There are a lot of different ideas being tossed about, some of them very good," Tyler says. "But I think that the key issue here is that the community has communicated to the state how intensely it feels about the importance of these ferries, not only from the point of view of bring part of the state's transportation infrastructure, but also as reminders of the history of this very important valley.'