Ferry Service Market Analysis: National Parks of New York Harbor

Abstract

A study team headed by the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center analyzed the feasibility of developing a water transportation system to serve the national parks of New York Harbor. This assessment was designed to address two principal objectives: ( a) determine the viability of water transportation as an access mode serving the parks and ( b) develop a preliminary ferry service concept plan. An analysis of market (demand) and site (supply) factors was critical to the assessment. The standard methods of demand forecasting could not be used in the market analysis, however, because most of the necessary data were lacking. Thus, an alternative approach was developed to perform this essential part of the assessment. Necessary market thresholds were estimated by applying a cost model. These thresholds were compared with ridership scenarios that were considered to be reasonable and conservative. From this analysis, the financial viability of the proposed ferry services was determined. For the particular application, the analysis results were sufficiently persuasive to suggest that proposed services should be implemented on a trial basis. This approach recognizes the practical limitations of demand forecasting in an environment in which data characterizing existing travel behavior are deficient and proposed services may attract substantially new markets with different socioeconomic and travel behavior characteristics. Because these limitations frequently apply to the planning of ferries and land-based modes serving parks and other recreational facilities, the described approach may have widespread applications.

A Framework for the Assessment and Policy Development of Water Transit Services in Dubai, UAE

“…Previous work in the area of marine operation and services tackled issues of planning for services (Cedar 2006), evaluation of services (Odek and Barthen 2009), forecasting demand (Laube and Dyer 2007;Outwater et al 2003), best practices for public outreach (Camay et al 2008), marine network design (Wang and Lo 2008), and intermodal modeling (East and Armstrong 1999). Ceder (2006) presented a planning approach with an evaluation procedure for making the best use of existing water and pier resources to improve public ferry transit through the provision of commercially-viable services in Hong Kong.…”

“…Odek and Brathen (2009) developed the so-called data envelopment analysis model to demonstrate ferry performance evaluation and service improvements in Norway. Laube and Dyer (2007) presented a model for demand forecasting of the ferry service system to serve the National Park of New York Harbor. Outwater et al (2003) tackled the expansion of mode choice models to account for traveler attitudes and different market segments.…”