Mayor sounds alarm over regional airport, passenger ferry surveys

Two regional transportation studies are eyeing Gig Harbor, and that makes the mayor nervous.

The two studies, both by the Puget Sound Regional Council, are focused on a future site for an additional large airport, and possible routes for a passenger ferry commuter service.

Gig Harbor doesn’t want either one, Mayor Kit Kuhn says.

“This could be a big threat to our quaint little village,” Kuhn said in an interview last week.

Kuhn recently got a briefing from the PRSC and was alarmed that Tacoma Narrows Airport was ranked among the top four possible expansion sites.

“They’re talking about a 7,000-foot runway and big passenger jets that would pass directly over Gig Harbor,” said the mayor. “That would pretty much devastate our area.”

Kuhn sounded the alarm during a council meeting last week, calling on residents to “make our voice heard.”

“I am strongly opposed to any expansion of the Tacoma Narrows Airport and with council’s support we will be sure that PSRC knows we will not support the expansion. We will be working with our lobbyists to make sure we are doing all we can,” he said.

Cool your jets

Hold on, PRSC executive director Josh Brown told The Gateway in an interview this weekend. Nothing like that is even remotely imminent.

“We’ve been 100 percent clear that this is not a siting study,” Brown said. “Instead, it is a baseline study to take stock of the airports we have now, and determine which of them meet the technical bare minimum for commercial service at some future time.”

The study is focused on technical criteria, Brown emphasized, not suitability or economic feasibility, and especially not political support.

“We are not making recommendations or judgments about suitability,” he said. “We’re simply providing policy makers with the baseline information they need to make those decisions.”

Regional demand for commercial and air cargo service is expected to double by 2050, according to the PRSC. Even with a third runway, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport won’t be able to handle the traffic alone. It has been estimated that either one new, three-runway airport or three single-runway airports will be needed.

So the PRSC has been asked by the Legislature to look at which of the Puget Sound’s 29 regional airports might be candidates for expansion. The $1.6 million study is expected to be finished by the end of the year.

Among the criteria: enough land area to physically expand, proximity to populations and jobs, reasonable commuting times to Seattle, room for adjacent development and supportive ownership.

Four airports identified

Four airports made the initial cut: Paine Field in Everett, Arlington Municipal Airport in Snohomish County, Bremerton National Airport and Tacoma Narrows.

“None of these are obvious or easy facilities to convert to commercial aviation,” Brown said. “But they do meet the basic minimum technical requirements.”

Paine Field, for instance, is limited because Boeing takes up much of the land area with manufacturing plants. Arlington and Bremerton are both considered too far away from Seattle.

Tacoma Narrows Airport has two advantages, the study has pointed out: An FAA tower, necessary for air traffic control, and a significant local population.

But of the four, Tacoma Narrows is probably the most problematic, Brown said.

“It has by far the shortest runway, at 5,002 feet, and by far the smallest footprint, at around 644 acres. It does not have very good connections to water, sewer and fuel pipelines.”

And not least, he noted, the airport’s owner, Pierce County, is so dead set against expansion that any extension of the TNA runway is expressively forbidden in the county’s master plan.

A non-starter

Derek Young, the Pierce County Council member who represents Gig Harbor, made it clear in an interview this weekend that position is unlikely to change.

“It’s an absolute non-starter for me,” Young said. “For sure, there is nothing in the near term.”

He ticked off the reasons: “For one thing, it’s bounded on one side by a cliff. And on the other side, we recently capped that road to create a safety zone. Then on the north side, you start running into residential areas, and of course, the flight plan would be right over the city of Gig Harbor.

“We resisted a runway expansion for corporate jets, and that’s even written into our master plan,” Young said. “The runway as it is now, as I understand it, wouldn’t even hold the weight of a large commercial airliner.”

Young sits on the PRSC governing board, and Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier is the current president.

Young said news of the PRSC’s study came at just the wrong time, as people around the airport were already jittery.

“There had already been complaints about noise,” he said. “Private pilots were making use of their quarantine time to go flying, and there was some increase in corporate jet landings.”

“At there same time, the county council was looking at some issues at the airport,” Young added. “Some of the hangers have outlived their useful life, there are some issues with the layout of the place, space for tie-downs, and so forth, and there is some available space for commercial uses. The neighborhood caught wind of that and thought, ‘runway expansion!’“

“The PSRC thing was the gas can on the fire, and it sort of got out of hand,” he said.

About those ferries

In a separate study, the PSRC is also looking into whether there is need or support for a Puget Sound-wide system of passenger ferries, modeled on the successful Bremerton-to-Southworth foot ferries operated by Kitsap County.

One of the routes being considered would run from Gig Harbor up the Colvos Passage to Seattle. Another might go from downtown Tacoma to Seattle.

It’s an idea popular with some legislators, Brown said, because of nostalgia for the old “mosquito fleet” of the 19th century, and frustration with highway traffic.

Between 1928 and 1950, when the first Narrows Bridge was built, a ferry ran between Point Fosdick, Fox Island and Titlow Beach on the Tacoma side. Between 1917 and 1928, the ferry docked inside the harbor, near where the Tides Tavern is now.

Nostalgia aside, said Mayor Kuhn, reviving ferry service, even for foot traffic only, is a really bad idea.

“They’re talking about 250-passenger ferries, which would be way too big,” he said. “The tides would limit their access, and there would be erosion along the shoreline from the wakes. Our bay is filled like a lake with people on the water, so there would always be the danger of accidents.”

Kuhn said he and his staff met with consultants from the PRSC on Sept. 21 and expressed their concerns.

“We greatly feel the ferry would overpower the quaint harbor we love, create erosion of our sand spit at the lighthouse and property owners’ beaches,” Kuhn told the City Council on Sept. 28. He said there was no parking available, and passengers would have to be bused downtown.

“Our primary concerns include parking, traffic and quality of life,” Kuhn said. “We told them. ‘Thank you,’ but asked them to take us off their list.”

You got it, says PRSC

Brown said that after hearing from the consultants, he agrees.

“While there are some advantages in terms of ridership, it quickly became apparent that there are significant challenges that would prevent a passenger-only ferry from serving Gig Harbor,” Brown said. “Tides would prevent boats of even moderate size from entering the harbor, and the old ferry dock outside the harbor would be totally inadequate.”

Even in highly traveled commuters routes like Olympia and Tacoma to Seattle, Brown said, it appears that passenger ferries just wouldn’t pencil out. Rail and bus routes are cheaper, and in the case of Olympia, faster, he said.

Brown said there was never any intention of forcing a ferry terminal on Gig Harbor, only to test the waters to see if there was any interest. It is clear, he said, that there isn’t.

“We heard the mayor loud and clear,” Brown said.

The Puget Sound Regional Council is soliciting citizen comments on the airport baseline study until Oct. 19. Details of the Online Open House are at https://www.psrc.org/aviation-baseline-study

This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 11:16 AM.