Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy. Photo / AP file
The change in the noise coming from the Matanuska's engines was a clue something was wrong with the ferry. A peek out the window was confirmation.
"We were creeping along," said Adrianne Milos, one of the passengers making what should have been a three-day trip from Bellingham, Washington, home to Alaska in late January.
The crew came on loudspeakers and announced they'd be bringing the ship into Juneau at half speed.
When they finally arrived, Milos, her husband and their cat, Squeaks, were only 112km from home in Haines, a small community up the Lynn Canal from Juneau. But they were effectively stranded.
A 30 per cent budget cut imposed on the ferry system last year and unforeseen maintenance problems meant the Matanuska was the only mainline ferry operating on the Alaska Marine Highway System. Now it was broken down, presenting more than an inconvenience to Milos and fellow passengers: Communities already reeling from service cuts faced a month with next to no ferries at all.
While presidential candidates and lawmakers in Washington decry the wobbly state of America's infrastructure and pitch multibillion-dollar plans to fix it, the collapse of Alaska's ferry system this winter dramatically illustrates how years of problems and a final blow in the form of a slashed budget caused a vital transportation link to fail altogether.
When a road is riddled with potholes or a rickety bridge has to be closed, there's likely to be another way around. That's not the case with Alaska's ferries, which serve three dozen communities, many of which aren't connected to the rest of the continent by roads at all.
In Juneau, Milos and her husband packed up their cat in a catamaran arranged by the ferry service and took up residence on board for a week with their 1988 Nissan Pathfinder. Finally, the weather improved enough for her to fly home, while the SUV made its way on a barge.
People in remote Alaskan settlements say it's hard for outsiders to grasp how important the Marine Highway System is to them.
The ferry network dates back to the earliest years of statehood in the 1960s. It serves the islands in the southeastern part of the state and the Aleutian chain that stretches into the northern Pacific, covering some 5630km in all. In the last budget year it carried about 250,000 passengers and 100,000 vehicles.
"We got so used to having it over the last 50-some years," said Milos, a retiree who initially moved to Haines to take a job working on the ferries. "It is our highway."
It's used to get groceries to stores, send salmon to market, dispatch school groups to basketball tournaments, take pregnant women to the hospital and bring their newborn babies home again. The mayor of one coastal town described how a woman had to convince her doctors to induce labour so her baby would be born in time for her to get home before the ferry service halted for the winter.
Lawmakers, officials and residents agree that the system's problems have been slowly mounting for years. The ferries' steel hulls are pitched in a constant battle against rust-causing salt water, making for hefty maintenance bills. The Matanuska (named for the Matanuska Glacier) and its sister ship are 57 years old, which drives up costs.
Just last week, I heard from caregivers that they cannot bring mammography equipment and other services to Southeast communities.
— Alyse Galvin for Congress (@AlyseGalvin) February 22, 2020
Villages depend on ferries to stock local grocery stores.
We must protect & support our Alaska Marine Highway System. https://t.co/wTLA8Fkz12
The current crisis began last February, when Alaska's new Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, introduced a budget that slashed state services across the board. Among them was a proposal to cut nearly US$100 million from the ferry network's US$140 million operating budget. The ferry system was just one target of Dunleavy's cost-cutting, which also took aim at the state university system. His administration said the moves were necessary in the face of declining oil revenue, which accounts for about a quarter of the state's budget.
Lawmakers, who say the proposed cut to the ferry system would have led to it shutting down entirely by last October, pushed back, reducing the ferry budget cut to US$43 million. Nevertheless, the state Transportation Department still had to reduce service dramatically, leaving some communities with no ferries through the winter, under a schedule it described in a news release as "fiscally constrained."
Juneau and the communities that dot the waterfront on the islands reaching along the Canadian border toward Washington would still be served by Matanuska - until it broke down. The ship isn't expected to be fixed until March at the earliest. Of the 12 vessels in the system's fleet, only the smallest is still running, providing short-distance shuttle service.
This winter, towns and villages across the state have been dealing with the consequences, figuring out alternatives to life without the ferry. There are private barge services and small planes, but both are expensive, and bad winter weather often leaves aircraft grounded. The governor himself recently had to cancel a town hall in a community served by the ferry because the weather was too bad to fly, prompting jibes on Twitter.
Shayne Thompson and his wife run the Angoon Trading Co., a small store in a village of about 500 people nestled against the water on Admiralty Island. He's been running out of fresh milk, fruit and vegetables.
Someone posted pictures of the store's bare shelves and coolers to Facebook, and the images were soon shared among residents feeling the effects of the ferry disruption. Images from another store showed blackened bananas and more empty shelves.
Thompson experimented with bringing in goods by air, but that didn't work out, so he's been using private boats.
Thompson thinks he could eventually reestablish a steady supply chain, but without the ferries, he wonders whether people will just drift away from the village.
"What will be fatal to the business is if we start loosing massive amounts of population," he said.
Fans fell from the upper stands when a security barrier collapsed.