Among the problems that I've mentioned, is the fact it barely faster than driving to the nearest major city on the Canadian side, London, ON. Plus the fact I'm a bit dubious there's a big crowd of people here in Cleveland and northern Ohio clamoring to go to London.But Yahoo Maps tells me the driving time from Cleveland to London is six hours, net of border crossing delays. If a ferry takes me and my car to Port Stanley (20-30 minuters from London) in two-and-a-half to three hours, then I could be in London in half the highway time. Of course that's "fast ferry" speed, but that is the type of service the Port's looking at.
Does anyone here want to go to London (or anyone from London want to come to Ohio)? Hmmm. Well, London is a city of 300,000 people, about the size of Pittsburgh (but without suburbs to speak of.) It's got a healthy industrial economy, a university, etc. If there was a city like that on this side of the lake, but there was no direct highway to it -- and you could cut the travel time from six hours to three by building one -- how long do you think it would be before that road got built?
See, I don't think this is a tourism question... it's a transportation infrastructure question. There's always an economic and social advantage to linking large human settlements to other large human settlements. There's also an obvious long-term advantage for Cleveland to strengthen its role as an international port of exit and entry.
But there's also a strong case for keeping the city's first experiment with this route as economical, incremental, and low-public-exposure as possible, consistent with a) speed, and b) truck transport as well as people and cars. That seems to be exactly what Rochester hasn't done. Failor's people at the Port of Cleveland talk like they're proceeding more carefully. Time will tell.
So I remain a Ferry Fan. Hey, Jerry, I want to go to London. Want to lead the first tour?