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2007, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022. all ferry operators had participated, and almost all of these

Over the years, MarineNews has reported on this data in ferries (99%) carry passengers, then the total count would a variety of ways, most recently in January of 2018. Not- likely be closer to 150 million passengers. That’s progress withstanding the inconsistency of the data and industry we can applaud – if we could only measure it accurately.

participation, the numbers are nevertheless well worth The NCFO asks whether a vessel carries passengers, looking at. And, we’ve even organized them to give some vehicles, and/or freight. The results show that the nearly historical perspective. all of the ferry vessels carry passengers with 98.9 percent reporting carrying passengers. Additionally, 44.1 percent

The Latest BTS NCFO Data carry vehicles and 19.3 percent carry freight. While the

A total of 618 vessels were reported in the 2022 NCFO, vast majority of ferries carry passengers, ferries also carry of which 89 percent were reported as in-service. Out of the vehicles and freight. Of the 537 reported passenger vessels, vessel count, 14 are utilized by two different ferry operations 29 percent also carried vehicles and 4.8 percent also carried leaving 604 unique vessels. The largest number of in-service freight. A total of 13 percent of reported vessels carried vessels reported by state are 86 and 55 vessels, reported by passengers, vehicles, and freight. A majority of vessels (53

New York and California, respectively. A ferry vessel can percent) only carried a single type of passengers or cargo. have its ownership and operation reported as private, pub- Of these, it was most common among passenger ferries. lic, or a combination of both. Of the reported vessels, the While 52 percent of passenger ferries carried only passen- majority (45.9 percent) are privately owned and operated. gers, only 1.3% of all ferries carrying vehicles only carried

Another 40.7 percent are publicly owned and operated. vehicles and 2.9% of ferries carrying freight only carried

Looking at the various statistics depicted in Table 2, we freight. Table 3 provides more data.

can see similarities across the board in reported numbers, Of the 570 (92 percent) vessels that reported on fuel and some real anomalies. For example, the drop in annual source, the data showed that diesel fuel is still the most passengers carried from 2016 to 2022 is substantial, but it widely popular. In addition to 468 vessels that used diesel is also roughly equivalent to the percentage drop in ferry and gasoline fuels, 25 vessels were using bio-diesel, 8 ves- operator participation in the latest NCFO survey. If those sels used a diesel/electric hybrid, and 4 vessels used elec- numbers were true, then that trend would be a disturbing tricity. Nominally, it doesn’t appear that the