The Brooklyn Paper has a good in-depth look into the state of the East River Water Taxi service. It’s not a pretty picture – NYWT is apparently ready to pull the plug entirely, while the City is backing away from its support for subsidies and service extensions to other sites in Williamsburg and Greenpoint (which should increase ridership, thus making service overall more viable and the need for subsidies that much less).

Tom Fox of NYWT nails it when he says “ferry service will work whenever [the City] the political will”. At the same time, developers (and just the few on the waterfront) are leaving their tenants high and dry by not stepping in and supporting service. At this point just about every waterfront development has promised a water taxi landing, but no one is willing to pony up some money to make the service viable.