The Alaska Marine Highway today announced that the scheduled sailing to Haines and Skagway was cancelled due to a mechanical failure of one of their ancient vessels. News of the breakdown came as no surprise to residents of the affected communities who continued on their merry way north and south via the Eastern Lynn Canal road between Skagway and Juneau. The state saved a ton of money by not having to provide fuel for the outdated smoke-belching gas-guzzling relic of a ship in order for it to waddle it's way up the Canal in duplication of the route provided by the far more efficient and dramatically easier and cost effective to maintain blacktop highway. Residents who normally make the drive anyway arrived in their usual fashion a mere hour after leaving Juneau and at a reasonable time of the day instead of waiting for the has-been Blue Canoe to leave at 4am and take over 7 hours to get there, the fast ferries having long since been relegated to the scrap yard due to inordinately high occurences of malfunctions and operating cost overruns. The only folks dissapointed at the news of the schedule delay were the starry eyed tourists who thought they could get a low cost whale watching trip courtesy of the AMHS.

Lets see now, Road out of Southeast, perhaps the rest of SE could get there and then DRIVE out?? Ya think?

That a $billion can buy.

Let's ask Cathy for THAT instead of some stupid skating rink.

Stikineriver, thanks for stating the obvious. If it's said enough times some Juneau people might catch on, but probably not.
Too bad the state can't spend money on new ferries but they can find lots for the road boondoggle out at bessie creek. A gold plated road to nowhere indeed.

Gram,
Have you ever driven the White Pass out of Skagway or Thompson Pass into Valdez? Those roads are much more prone to Avalanche than any road to Skagway would be and they keep them open all year long and at a manageable cost. Even during the worst years (900 inches of snow for Thompson Pass) the road is closed due to avalanche for approx: 3-4 days a season. That’s it.

Here are some numbers for fuel costs: Note that fuel is a small fraction of the cost to run the ferry. labor costs are the majority with AMHS having 750 Full time employees and approx. 100 part time.

According to Capt. Norm Edwards, AMHS operations manager. The Taku burns about $30,000 of fuel a week, he said. http://juneauempire.com/stories/050601/Ins_Taku.html

(Does anyone know the fuel economy of the Leconte?)

So using that as a quick base line it is reasonable to say that 30,000$ of fuel is equal to 6818 Gallons at 4.40$ a gallon. Since it is about 90 Miles to Skagway from Juneau and the average car gets around 18 miles a gallon then 90/18=5 Gallons to drive to Skagway from Juneau. That means that 6818/5= 1363 vehicles could drive from Juneau to Skagway and use the same amount of fuel that the Taku uses in a week.
This obviously is a very rough estimate and needs to be scaled to the fuel economy of the Leconte and to the transit between Juneau and Skagway but you get the picture.

There is no way that it is cheaper for the state to run a ferry between Juneau and Skagway than it would be to build a road. No way. Just look at labor cost alone.

The road all the way to Skagway IS the best long term solution to all of SE Alaska's transportation needs.

Sadly, the facts and figures Noroadfugitive provided just won't sway the anti roadies that would prefer to keep us in the 19th century dark ages forever and continue to make SE Alaska one of the most expensive places in the USA to live in...wait until the political clout up North finally decides enough is enough with the expensive and inefficient Marine Hwy system and quits funding it for their own highways up there.

Time to retire Taku and build a road between Juneau, Haines and Skagway and get another new ferry or two for south of Juneau and Washington. Haines and Skagway have their share of flights each day and a road connection to north so why even have a ferry. A road to their towns from Juneau would be a great benefit for tourism.

Almost as predictable as the risk of avalanches along east Lynn Canal are the posts of those who claim that maintainence problems with the ferry I moved to Juneau on in 1967 are a rationale for building a road to a gold mine in Berners Bay under the pretense of access to Skagway...year round.

I have driven the avalanche prone road to Seward in winter a dozen times. It is terrifying and I've been stranded more than once for days while the road is cleared. Made me think about the safety and convenience of ferries.

A road to Skagway would make Alaska's other avalanche prone roads look like childs play. Ferries serve all of our communities in SE. Let's build roads where they make sense, and use ferries where they make sense.

Than Parnell giving it all back to the oil companies.