Staten Island Ferry-the best free ride in New York City

The best way to admire the Manhattan skyline is from the harbor.  Staten Island Ferry, considered the “Best Ride in New York City,”   gives you this opportunity for free.   Everybody knows that New York City is the city that never sleeps.   Staten Island ferry schedule proves it:  ferry runs  24/7 365 (or even 366!)  days a year!  From the deck of the ferry you will have a perfect view of The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. You'll see the skyscrapers and bridges of Lower Manhattan. Today, the ferry is recognized as a New York icon and a symbol of the borough of Staten Island.

Today, Staten Island is the fastest growing borough in New York City. In area, it is two and a half times as large as Manhattan, but its current population of nearly 500,000 is less than Manhattan’s was in 1850. The only direct link to Manhattan is the Staten Island Ferry.

 The first Ferry between  Manhattan and  Staten Island  established in 1747. On October 25, 1905, the new  ferryboats  named after the five city boroughs -  Brooklyn, Bronx, Richmond, Queens, and Manhattan  were introduced. These were the largest ferries on the East Coast and made the crossing ( 5 miles- 8 km)  in 22.5 minutes.
 In 1905, a nickel bought a ride aboard one of these  coal burning  steam ferries.   In the early days of NYC ferry travel one side of the boat had the men's toilet and the other side had the women's toilet and the signage was to assist passengers so they could easily locate the correct facility without having to encircle the entire vessel.  Later after these boats were retrofitted with multiple bathrooms on each side the MEN and WOMEN sides became SMOKING and NO SMOKING sides.
On July 4 1997,  after 82 years of the history,  the Staten Island Ferry (50 cents round trip) , turned into a free boat ride,  just as the same day when a new  Metrocard   allow  free transfers between buses and subways in the city.
In October 2003   one of the five vessels  slammed into a pier while docking amidst high winds. Eleven commuters were killed.  Since then, precautions and protocols have been adopted and the   ferry returned to service after a multimillion-dollar rehabilitation   with a permanent memorial plaque. Seven years later the same ferry boat , the Andrew J. Barberi, one of the largest in the Staten Island fleet, was involved in another accident. The  ferry   was commissioned in 1981. For five days after Hurricane Sandy, the Staten Island Ferry did not operate. The boats were mostly unscathed during the storm. But there was $30 million in damage to the St. George and Whitehall terminals and to the piers.

New York   is planning to acquire a total of three new 4,500-passenger ferries that will be more maneuverable, resilient and capable of operating in a wider range of locations and conditions.
Now on a  typical day, 109 trips move about 70,000 people across the harbor, making the Staten Island Ferry one of the most reliable forms of mass transit in the city. A new  Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Manhattan  was open in 2005,  replacing the old one  damaged by fire in 1991.
No cars are allowed on the ferries after carried due to security concerns after 9/11/2001.
There are nine ferry boats in four classes currently in service.  The keel of the newest one Spirit of America built with steel from The World Trade Center Towers. The ship was named to honor the spirit and unity of America after the attacks.
Two  of them The Newhouse and Barberi are the highest passenger capacity vessels in the world at 6000 passengers each. 

Beer, soft drinks, sandwiches, hotdogs, and pretzels are available for purchase on board, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But my advice is- grab something  to eat before embarking the ferry - you can have better and cheaper choices. To  enjoy  the best free view of the statue of Liberty  and the wonderful New York skyline   do not go inside the boat and stand near the railing on the right side of the ferry.  And do not forget to bring a jacket or   a windbreaker - the winds on the water can be surprisingly brisk. The best time to go  is 30 minutes before the sunset  on a sunny day.  And do not leave you camera at home!

The East River Ferry

     The East River Ferry was launched in June 2011 as a three-year pilot project. The project was so successful that it was extended this winter to continue through at least 2019. The East River Ferry currently stops at terminals in Long Island City, Brooklyn Bridge  DUMBO  stop (Brooklyn side), Williamsburg, Green Point, Wall Street, and Midtown Manhattan. The ferry runs in two directions from Brooklyn Bridge - southbound to Wall street ( 5 minutes ride)  and northbound – to East 33 in Manhattan.  

If you ride the full length of the route as I did on early July morning - from DUMBO(  acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) up to Midtown , you feel like you are on an attraction. You can see The Freedom Tower rising in the south, United Nations building   to the north.

You'll pass under three bridges, each over 100 years old - Brooklyn bridge, Manhattan Bridge and Williamsburg Bridge. The views from the ferry are amazing! The price is $4 for a one way trip and $12 for an all-day pass.

     And there is free connecting shuttle bus that runs on a loop through Midtown. The ferry runs every 15- 20 minutes in morning and afternoon rush hours of working days , and every hour during the weekend day. Total ride form DUMBO to Midtown is 20 minutes. The full schedule can be found here.

     The first East River ferry was established in 1642 by Cornelius Dircksen, connecting present day Williamsburg, Brooklyn to  a small Peck Slip street in Manhattan, where Dircksen kept an inn.

     Originally, all East River ferry boats were either row-boats or pirogues (small, light, flat-bottomed boats). In 1814, the Catherine Street Ferry became the first horse-boat ferry to cross the river. Horse-boats were twin boats connected by a wheel at the center, which horses would power by treadmill. At the same year Nassau of the Fulton Ferry Company became the first steamboat ferry on the East River. Although steamboats were much faster than horse-boats, they were more expensive to make.

     In 1824 Supreme Court ordered an end to the Fulton and Livingston monopoly and the steamers became open to public competition.As the Brooklyn population quickly grew, transportation between Long Island and Manhattan became increasingly valuable. By the end of XIX century the Union Ferry Company of Brooklyn had 17 vessels and carried about 40,000 passengers annually. The vessels were really large with the biggest being over 651 tons, 180 ft., Those ships were so strong that the government chose to borrow seven of them during the Civil War. In 1883 there were twelve ferry routes using ten different ferry terminals in Brooklyn and eleven in Manhattan. 
    The famous American poet Walt Whitman wrote in a poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” in 1900: 

Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore;
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide;
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east;
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high;
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

     The Brooklyn Bridge was built in in 1883. It was the first bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Between 1907 and 1917, ferry traffic decreased by 35%. By the 1920s, the Union Ferry Company’s Fulton Ferry House, once referred to as the “Great Gateway to Brooklyn,” was serving only few passengers and horse-drawn vehicles. The Fulton Ferry House was closed in 1924.

The free ferry from Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park to   Pier 11 in Lower Manhattan was started just days after the terror attack, 9/11.  This ferry was a blessing  for commuters at this time- Brooklyn Army Terminal has a huge parking lot. This ferry was shut down in the spring of 2003, after the N and R subway lines have been restored.

     New York Water Taxi runs a daily shuttle from Wall Street's Pier 11 in Manhattan to Brooklyn's IKEA  superstore dock.

The shuttle runs from 2:00pm – 8:00pm on weekdays and costs $5.00, And you can even get $5 back if you spend more than $10 in IKEA.

     Now City and federal officials are looking now for funding from Washington to expand the East River Ferry, launched in 2011, and push a plan that would bring the waterway service to Astoria's developing Hallets Point peninsula and several other city neighborhoods.

New York city  Ferry  info is here

There is a ferry service between Beach 108th Street and Beach Channel Drive on the Rockaway Peninsula (temporary landing was installed) and Pier 11 in Lower Manhattan in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, that destroyed Far Rockaway in October 2012. The price is on the weekday is only $2! 

The service starts at 5:45 a.m. in the Rockaways with ferries departing for Manhattan regularly until 9:20 a.m.
Weekday ferry service will continue to operate on its current schedule through Labor Day weekend 2013. 
There is a weekend beach service with more expensive  fares: $30 roundtrip for adults.