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Economy Politics Rochester

The Problem with the Fast Ferry Wasn’t the Fast Ferry

The Rochester Fast Ferry, via bobcatnorth on Flickr

Someone wants to try a ferry service in Rochester again. No shit. Really:

Sibley descendant floats idea to restart ferry service | Democrat and Chronicle | democratandchronicle.com.

I love Rochester and I love Monroe County. But the problem with the Fast Ferry was never the Fast Ferry: it was us. It is our legacy and our destiny to be fiscally and socially conservative with a small “c.” I don’t mean that we’re all bible-thumping, anti-tax zealots; just folks who don’t figure anything all that grand is ever going to happen here and anyway… how much will it cost? Will there be loud people having fun past nine o’clock?

Yes, there were huge structural, organizational and logistical problems with the Fast Ferry system. But those problems could have been addressed and improved upon by a community that wanted the Fast Ferry. Instead, every small scandal threatened to shut the service down.. until it ultimately collapsed in the epic failure it was doomed to be from the outset.

Other projects follow a similar suit. The Renn Square project literally shrank out of existence, from a four-theater project with a bus terminal, MCC campus and shops to a three-theater project with a bus terminal and campus to a two-theater project with a bus terminal to a bus terminal to….. blink. Frontier Field, nice though it undeniably is, started out as a larger stadium than its predecessor and ended up as a teacup-sized venue 5000 seats smaller than Silver.

There were good reasons to question every one of these projects. There were perfectly logical explanations for why they shrank. But where other communities would have demanded improvements to the plan, our community cried out for each plan to disappear. So developers made them smaller.

Really, the reason they all shrank is because we lack the capacity to dream big for ourselves. I’m sorry. I love you guys. But you know its true.

By Tommy Belknap

Owner, developer, editor of DragonFlyEye.Net, Tom Belknap is also a freelance journalist for The 585 lifestyle magazine. He lives in the Rochester area with his wife and son.