A FERRY GOOD IDEA: This is about regional development and the lakefront. Well, sort of about the lakefront. It's more about what starts at the lakefront and extends sixty miles north to another lakefront, in another country.

If you live around here, it's hard not to know that our progressive thinkers in and out of city government are very intensely interested in "our" lakefront, along with the lake itself... out to a distance of a couple miles. If you've somehow missed this, see here and here. Every day there is some new wrinkle: what to do with Whiskey Island, the airport, the Port... whether to put a new island out by the breakwater... how to connect all the great development potential to the nearby neighborhoods... how it all fits in with a new Convention Center... etc etc.

For the Campbell Administration, the theme of this whole discussion is "Connecting Cleveland". So it's strange that the one truly historic function of the waterfront gets short shrift in the current process -- the function of "connecting Cleveland" to the rest of the world.

I'm not talking about the Port's overseas shipping operations and its role in the St. Lawrence Seaway system, though that deserves more than the perfunctory acknowledgment it's getting from the planners and "livable edge" enthusiasts.

I'm talking about connecting Cleveland and northeast Ohio directly to the people and markets on the other side of Lake Erie.

I'm talking about a ferry to Canada.

The Port Authority has a 1999 feasibility study that says a twice-a-day, people-and-truck ferry operation to Port Stanley, on the coast just south of London, should be economically viable. They've got a second study -- much bigger, costing $800,000 in Federal grant money -- about to commence. You can read about it in this WCPN interview with the Port's Gary Failor, aired early in 2002. But that's just about the only place you can read about it, because the PD, the planners, and all the other lakefront talkers have ignored it completely. (Well, to be completely fair, one lonely well-informed soul brought the idea up at one of the City's public meetings -- it's buried way down in the middle of 600 or so public comments recorded on the Planning website.)

I think the Cleveland/Ontario ferry is a really, really good idea that deserves far more exposure and support than it's getting.

Here's the basic idea: Twice a day, year-round or spring-to-fall depending on the type of vessel, a ferry would do a round trip between Cleveland and Port Stanley. The sixty-three-mile transit would take about two hours each way. The ferry would be able to carry several hundred people with cars, plus some trucks.

On the north end, passengers arriving from Cleveland would be about twenty miles from London, the economic center of southwest Ontario, a city about the size of Pittsburgh in an economic region comparable to Summit County. Just south of London they could get on the freeway for a two-hour drive to Toronto, a metropolitan city of more than four million people, one of the most diverse and prosperous cities in North America, and the economic capital of Canada. Each of these cities is now about six hours from Cleveland through Windsor or Niagara (and often hours more with border delays). The ferry would cut the drive by four to six hours and the total trip by at least two (for Toronto) to four (for London).

Passengers arriving in Cleveland would see the city with its glitziest face forward. They could walk off the boat and into the Rock Hall, the Science Museum, Browns Stadium, the Waterfront RTA Line. They would be in easy walking distance from the major hotels and the Convention Center (present or future). They could drive off the boat and quickly get on three Interstates (90, 71, 77).

A ferry would link Cleveland economically and culturally to a whole additional region, and to a world-class metropolis just beyond. It would make our city an international port of entry. (If you're worried about Cleveland's "coolness", tell me what's more instantly cool than an international city.)

And all it would take is a boat.

The Port Authority does not have this project on a fast track... the WCPN interviewer linked above says it's "some years" away. One important reason: they envision this as a privately capitalized, privately operated enterprise, and experienced ferry operators with deep pockets are hard to find.

This is silly. The Port has been issuing bonds right and left for all kinds of non-Port projects, starting with the Rock Hall. Why aren't they talking with Ontario economic development officials about joint bond financing of a publicly-owned vessel, with an experienced private operator under contract?

Maybe it would be smart to buy an existing vessel for a few million dollars (or lease one) and give it a one or two year trial run. But one way or another, I think Cleveland should be planning for an Ontario ferry in the near future.

It would have to be smarter investment than the Waterfront RTA Line.