Re: “New ferry expected to make Portland-Yarmouth trip in 5½ hours” (March 24):

In 2009, we moved to Portland from Honolulu, Hawaii, where, in full view of our downtown condo, we could see the dock where the Hawaii Superferry, Alakai, was berthed. It was driven out of Hawaii after bringing a great new way for intrastate tourism and commerce to exist.

We also traveled on the Nova Star, and others traveled on the old Cat or the Scotia Prince. And when living in Sweden, I recall fondly traveling to Finland on wonderful international ferries. But these ferries all need to move commercial traffic to pay the bills.

I was disappointed in Portland city spokeswoman Jessica Grondin’s comment that for a ferry to carry trucks, “We would have to spend a lot more money … which is money we don’t have” – along with a further comment that the area around the terminal is being developed with hotels and tourist-oriented business, and trucks were incompatible with those uses. The implication was that Portland was going to limit commercial traffic on the new Cat.

The Ocean Gateway terminal was built at a cost of over $26.5 million, in two phases, with greater than $15 million of it being state and local investment.

We can bring the significant car and pedestrian tourist traffic from this service to the main terminal for the slight inconvenience of maybe five to 10 trucks in the middle of the day, or move The Cat to the western freight terminal and again lose the ferry. This will tell our Canadian friends from Nova Scotia: “Sorry – we don’t want your business.”

I hope that the hard work of U.S. Sen. Angus King and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree in securing this opportunity will not be thrown away by our city.

Kay Aikin

Portland

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