The first fully electric ferry, one of two commissioned by the City of pc28¹ÙÍøto service pc28¹ÙÍøislands, could reach Ontario shores within two years.
The city has awarded Damen, a Dutch company, a $90-million contract to build the two ships, the first to be delivered in late 2026, followed by a second ferry in early 2027.Â
The ships will replace two of the city’s aging fleet, the members of which are between 61 and 114 years old.
After a crash into a dock in 2022, the Transportation Safety Board found that one city ferry was operating with safety deficiencies.
As Toronto’s aging ferry fleet becomes increasingly unreliable, water taxi services have been picking up the slack.
As Toronto’s aging ferry fleet becomes increasingly unreliable, water taxi services have been picking up the slack.
The new ferries will go into service four weeks after delivery to the ferry terminal, but that timeline assumes smooth sailing.
Kingston’s hybrid diesel-electric ferry, which runs between the city and Wolfe Island, was delivered in 2021 from Damen but only went into service a few weeks ago.
Ted Hsu, the MPP for Kingston and The Islands, said there were problems finding enough qualified staff to man the new ferry, which is 50 per cent larger than the one it replaced. Installation of charging and automated docking infrastructure is still ongoing. The provincial Ministry of Transportation owns and operates the ferry.
The delays have resulted in a reduced schedule, with the ferry leaving either sideside every 80 minutes instead of every 60, which has many Wolfe Island residents upset, Hsu said.
Toronto’s new ferries are also bigger, a factor that will require work at the Jack Layton ferry terminal, at the foot of Bay Street, to install charging and electrical infrastructure as well as “dock anchoring modifications to the ferry berths to stabilize the new ferries while charging,” according to an email sent by the city. The docks on pc28¹ÙÍøIslands won’t need to be modified to enable operation of the ferries.
The work is supposed to be complete by the third quarter of 2026, according to a city executive committee meeting this month, in advance of the delivery of the first ferry in November that year.
That vessel will be a so-called RoPax, a vehicle and passenger ferry that can accommodate up to 650 people and 14 vehicles per trip, replacing the Ongiara, the only vessel in the city’s fleet that carries cars and is certified to operate through the winter months.
The second ship, the Pax, is a passenger ferry that can take as many as 1,300 people and will replace the Inglis, which carried up to 309 passengers.
A second ship, the Pax, is a passenger ferry that can take as many as 1,300 people and will replace the Inglis, which carried up to 309 passengers.
Supplied photoThe city said the current design of the ferries allows charging to be completed in approximately six minutes under normal operations.  The vessels have the option to charge between trips.
Damen is building the ferries, which were designed by the Quebec-based company Concept Naval, at its ship yard in Romania.
A separate company will install the dock upgrades, including the chargers, which are much different from those used to charge an electric car.
“The size and the dimensions and the powers that are used are significantly bigger, as you can imagine,” said Henk Grunstra, Damen’s product director for ferries. There are charging ports at either end of the ship, said Grunstra, and the batteries are surrounded by a system that can heat or cool them according to the weather. The new ferries will continue to be docked manually.
About 1.4 million passengers a year use the city’s ferries, predominantly from May to September when 80 per cent of the trips are taken. The city’s fleet also includes the Sam McBride, and the Thomas Rennie, as well as a heritage vessel called the Trillium.Â
In a letter presented to the city’s executive committee at an Oct. 1 meeting, Mayor Olivia Chow requested that city staff provide an update on “enhanced safety measures on our public ferries,” and said she wanted to consider leasing ferries, to provide “frequent and reliable service” until the new ferries are delivered.
“Unfortunately, we have seen a number of incidents that risk shaking people’s faith in our ferries,” wrote Chow. “Over the past few years, the ferries have experienced hard dock incidents, power outages, maintenance delays and other challenges.”
Chow wrote that the city had already made improvements, including hiring 70 deckhands to staff the ferries, better signage, pre-departure safety announcements and lighting.
Correction — Oct. 15, 2024
This story has been updated. A previous version misspelled the name of the Dutch shipbuilding company Damen and Ted Hsu, MPP for Kingston and the Islands. The earlier version also misstated the departure times for the ferry between Kingston and Wolfe Island.
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