Metro Focus interviews the CEO of the East River Ferry:

Ridership last week saw 1,500 riders per day. You use the word drop only in comparison to a robust level of ridership over the summer. It’s interesting how people choose to characterize the numbers. We are very impressed with how commuter ridership has grown through the winter.

Ridership is certainly down from the summer (duh), but it would be interesting to know how it compares with projections before the winter. Anecdotally, there are a lot more people riding the East River Ferry in the winter than ever rode the Water Taxi (which had fewer stops and much more limited schedule). But the East River Ferry is also caught in a bit of a catch-22 – they have reduced the number of boats in the winter months, so service is only hourly during the day, and half-hourly during parts of the morning and evening rush. That makes it much harder to just “jump on the ferry” to get somewhere.

As to the perks on the horizon – beer. You heard it here first: