This summer, you’ll be able to catch a NYC Ferry from the Lower East Side.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Wednesday the start of construction for a new NYC Ferry landing on the Lower East Side, which he said will be open by the summer of 2018.
The mayor also announced another ferry route that will service the South Bronx, expected to be completed by this summer, as well.
“Here’s a community on the Lower East Side that for a long time has not had enough ways to get around,” de Blasio said at a press conference Wednesday morning in Corlears Hook. “One of the central ideas of the NYC Ferry was to open up opportunity, to connect people to jobs, connect people to education, to give them a chance to get around their own city in ways they just don’t have right now, and this is a great example of what we’re doing here on the Lower East Side.”
The new method of transportation will provide Lower East Side residents with a 9-minute ferry ride to Wall Street and a 17-minute ride to Midtown, compared to a 13-minute walk just to the nearest subway station, officials said.
The city expects the Lower East Side route to serve 1 million riders each year, reducing travel times for many — especially the nearly 8,000 families who live in nearly NYCHA developments. The South Bronx route is expected to serve about 400,000 riders.
The city is building four docks in total for these two new routes: at Corlears Hook, East 90th Street, and Stuyvesant Cove on the East River, and at Clason Point Park in Soundview Section of the Bronx.
“People in this city understand that if you don’t have a way to get around, if everything you try to do takes too much time, it just robs you of opportunity,” de Blasio said. “It certainly robs you of the time you need to spend with your family and take care of everything else in life. We want to constantly make it easier and faster for New Yorkers to get around.”
Since its launch in May 2017, NYC Ferry has had almost 3 million riders, nearly 800,000 more than officials originally projected.
The ferry service is part of the de Blasio administration’s efforts to make New York City “the fairest big city in America,” he said.
“Our streets are too congested, our highways are too congested, our subways too crowded — we need more alternatives,” de Blasio said. “You can’t operate in the modern world if there isn’t mass transit.”
