Forget Flying Cars: We Need Floating Ones

In May, New York City made a splash when city officials launched the first new public inter-borough ferry service since the Fulton Ferry between Brooklyn and Manhattan docked for the last time in 1924. By 2018, 20 newly built passenger- and bicycle-only vessels will operate among all the boroughs via 22 landings along 6 routes—except Staten Island, which is already linked by ferry to Manhattan. It’s part of a $325 million effort to refloat a waterborne mass transit system that harkens back to the 19th century, when New York ferries carried more than 50 million passengers annually.

Waterways like rivers, lakes, and canals were the original interstates; most of the world’s greatest cities were harbor towns that were able to capitalize on their access to shipping. Well into the early 20th century, from the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes to the Hanseatic cities of Northern Europe and along the Mediterranean basin, urbanites got around on water. And cities like Amsterdam and Venice never gave up their water links. Nor could they: On the car-free islands of the Venetian lagoon, for example, the city’s network of water taxis and vaporetti, or water buses, comprise the entire mass transit system.