[BonesJustice]

> Commuting in NYC sucks and you should expect it to get worse.

The secret is to move to Jersey and take the NY Waterway ferry. $272/month, including bus transit on both sides if you need it. While your boat may occasionally be 5 minutes late (like every other mass transit option), they almost never shut down.

I can't speak to the East River Ferry.

[evanelias]

I agree with the "move to Jersey" part, but NY Waterway is a truly terrible company.

They fraudulently overbilled the government for ferry services they provided after the 9/11 attacks. Really profoundly sick behavior. [1] [2]

More recently, they've sold their Weehawken depot to a developer -- and then used their lack of a depot as an excuse to shadily land-grab space in Hoboken. They're threatening to put an industrial refueling depot in a spot surrounded entirely by parks, housing, and a university. [3] [4]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/nyregion/ferry-operator-i...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/nyregion/18ferry.html

[3] https://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2018/01/hoboken_mayor_bl...

[4] https://betterwaterfront.org/?p=7820

[BonesJustice]

I agree that it’s a shitty company run by a real life Montgomery Burns. But that whole dispute over the “land grab” strikes me as sour grapes.

Union Dry Dock has been courting buyers since at least 2000 when the Stevens Institute planned to buy it. If it was so important to the city of Hoboken, why didn’t they just buy the land in the intervening decade and a half?

Seems to me that the residents ought to be taking their own local government to task here. It’s like they were holding off indefinitely, under the assumption that they could avoid spending the money, then swoop in when someone else tries to buy it. And then their plan bit them in the ass.

[evanelias]

My understanding is that NY Waterway's execs previously owned the Weehawken land where their current depot is, but chose to sell to a developer. Their entire predicament seems to be tied to this decision, of their own making, which they profited from.

Meanwhile in 2017, when Union Dry Dock announced they were winding down their business, Hoboken tried to buy the land, but they could not come to an agreement. Ditto for multiple previous attempts by Stevens, private developers, etc over the years. The value of some of these offers exceeded the amount eventually paid by NY Waterway!

And now the only reason Hoboken can't use eminent domain is that NY Waterway convinced NJ Transit to swoop in and buy the land from them. As a state agency NJ Transit is immune to municipal eminent domain. Yet, NJ Transit does not operate ferries, and never has, to my knowledge. And NY Waterway's execs have state lobbyists and make extensive political donations [1]. This smells corrupt.

[1] https://betterwaterfront.org/?p=7797

[BonesJustice]

Yeah, I'm not sympathetic to either side. And while I have very strong feelings about using eminent domain against private citizens, I'm much less likely to object to it being used against a corporation (though I guess that ship has sailed thanks to the deal with NJ Transit).

From a legal and due process perspective, I'm ambivalent as to how the situation shakes out. There's been enough foolish, lazy and/or shady behavior on both sides that neither has much ground to stand on.

As far as my personal feelings go, I'd rather not see a refueling station built there, but nobody asked me.