Update 10/05/2023: Service to Greenpoint has been restored, and Lendlease has responded to our inquiry.
“Due to the severe weather and flooding last Friday, the Greenpoint ferry landing experienced electrical equipment damage, resulting in intermittent power loss at the landing and ferry service interruptions.“
Last week, I claimed in writing that the only constants in life were death, taxes, and that Greenpoint would always have a weird smell going on. Adding another to that list — the Greenpoint ferry stop will never properly work.
As of this morning, ferry service to the Greenpoint landing will be suspended “due to a mechanical issue.” Yesterday morning, service was temporarily suspended for at least 30 minutes “due to a power issue.” And Sunday, service was suspended from about 8:30 AM to 1:30 PM “due to power issues” (note the PLURAL on Sunday.)
These closures join the temporary closure on September 25 and the recent weeks-long closure in July. And, of course, the Greenpoint ferry landing reopened less than a year ago, after shutting down for 18 months in order to complete repairs.
We’ve attempted to dig into the issue of why exactly this is such a chronic issue for the ferry. It’s worth noting that ours is the only privately-owned pier in the city’s ferry system (surprise surprise!) But while it’s easy to pin the blame entirely on the developer responsible, constant disruptions to service and mechanical issues have plagued the Greenpoint stop long before Lendlease took over in 2019. The ferry was out of service for months in 2014, and we even ran an article in 2011 entitled “Ferry Frustrations.” Of course, a private developer owned the pier at that time. Maybe public transportation should not be privately owned?
The 2014 closure stemmed from a collapse of the piles holding the pier up, the same issue that would cause the stop to shut down from May 2021 to November 2022. Has anyone considered looking into that?
We have reached out to Lendlease for comment and will update the story as we learn more.
Having a backup manual pull chain hoist to operate the landing gate would seem logical. Then again, logic is usually left out of the equation. Also, why would the city allow private ownership of any dock or slip?
That tower was built badly. You can literally bend the metal sills back on West St. Not surprised things keep going wrong with the pier.
It likely also doesn’t help that there was a time during Covid of teens racing motor bikes up and down the pier.