HE 5778 T4 1976 Vol. 1. EIJJNCl1IC BENEFITS OF LAKE MICHIGAN CAR FERRY SERVIcE VOillME II TRANSPORTATION UBRARY MICHIGAN DEPT. STATE HIGHWAYS& · TRANSPORTATION LANSING,MICH • . .·• .. · Prepared Fo~ Michigan Department of State Higb,ways and Transportation (Contract No. 76-1579) Decelllber i97~ TERA, Inc. Suite 888, 1901 N. Fort Myer Drive Arl:ington, Virginia 22209 (703) 527-0440 EOONCMIC BENEFITS OF LAKE MICHIGAN CAR FERRY SERVICE VOLUME II TRANSPORTATION LIBRARY MICHIGAN DEPT. STATE HIGHWAYS & TRANSPORTATION LANSING,MICH. Prepared For Michigan Department of State Highways and Transportation (Contr;:tet No. 76-1579) December 1976 TERA, Inc. Suite 888, 1901 N. Fort Myer Drive Arlington, Virginia 22209 (703) 527-0440 APPENDIX A EVOLUTION OF CAR FERRIES River Ferries The car ferries started on the Great Lakes - St. Lawrence System IIDre than 120 years ago. The first car ferries were designed to bring wide gauge C3nadian rail cars (5'6") across river to Buffalo (the International, 1857) and the St. Lawrence River (the John Counter, 1853). The International, owned by the Buffalo and Lake Huron Railroad, was prOIIDted by Buffalo businessrren 1ci.th a vie<.v to sustaining the port's position as a major trans-shipment carrier to the East coast by tying the port to the rapidly expanding C3nadian railroads. In the cross river service, ferries 1~re merely substitutes for bridges and tunnels. No sooner than the corrpletion of the Buffalo-Fort Erie international suspension bridge, the International was laid up. C3nadian railroads (the Great 1\Testern Railway) also used break-hulk ships and later car ferries (1866) to bridge the river at \\Tindsor. The Grand Trunk utilized car ferries to bridge the St. Clair River between Port Huron and Sarnia in 1872. The first of these ships (the Great Westerr•z! 1vas built in Scotland and assembled in Windsor. But the other Detroit-\olindsor ferries ,,·ere built in expanding Great Lake shipyards. For a time, the ferries vJere the largest and most sophisticated vessels on the lakes. They were also remarkably economical 'Ihe Grand Trunk's three ferries, averaging more than 200' in length and 20 cars capacity, cost less than $200,000 each. They persisted in the cross river trades A-1 A-2 long after bridges and tunnels had been completed. The Lansdoume, designed by the distinguished naval architect Frank E. Kirby in 1884, was a first class iceboat that remained in service for ·over 90 years. The major contribution to breaking pack ice on the Detroit River, hcMever, was made by the Transfer, built in Cleveland for the Michigan General Railroad in 1888. She had a steel hull and a huge propeller (9' 6\:) that could be used to cut through pack ice while proceeding stem-first across the river. The most extensive Detroit River car ferry service occurred almost by serendipity. It lUd been originated by the Canada Southern Bridge Company as an interim expedient to a bridge that never proved necessary. The ferry was part of an overall .strategy to provide the Vanderbilt interests with a direct link into the Chicago market. At their peak in 1905, the four ferry operators serving the Detroit- Windsor route carried an average 1,097 cars a day and 1·1ere second only to New York Harbor ferries. Operations diminished after the opening of the New York Central Tunnel in 1910, but car ferries persisted in the Detroit-Hindsor gateway trades. Mackinac Straits The Mackinac Straits car ferry had much in corrm:m 1vith the short haul river crossing services to the East. It was initiated as a subsidiary of three rela- · tively short line railroads, one converging on St. Ignace froo the Upper Peninsula and two serving Mackinac and Michigan's Lower Peninsula. The !lackinac Transportation Company, formed in 1881, initiated sooe remarkable teclmological innovations moving TRANSPORTATION liBRARY MICHIGAN DEn. $1'/,1£ HIGHWAYS & TRANSPORTATION LANSING, MICH. A-3 from a break-bulk sterner to barges, to the IIDSt sophisticated ice breakers in the world within the first decade of service. The St. Ignace, designed by Frank lliby and built by the Detroit Dry Dock in 1887, had a revolutionary bmv propeller ten feet in diameter that became the key to the successful ice breaking industry 1 in Finland and throughout the world. It also had a spoon-shaped pr01v for rising on the ice sheets, ballast trinming tanks for lateral IIDtion, and other pioneering ice features. The St. Ignace was followed by a succession of larger and IIDre powerful ships, reaching the peak with the Chief Wawatam, a 4, 500 horsepower ship capable of carrying 26 cars and built by the Toledo Ship Building Company in 1911. The Mackinac Transportation Company had helped to overcome . the IIDSt serious spatial isolation that existed in the lakes. The only other routes to Upper Peninsula from the rapidly growing Lower Peninsula were L~ough Chicago by rail or from Detroit by water. But, at the peak of its rail passenger and freight traffic, three basic forces were set in motion that were to accelerate the MTC decline. The first was what even Hilton regards as a serious short-sightedness 2 in company policy with respect to the rise of the automobile. Instead of attempting to cultivate the new markets with the increase of tourism, hunting, fishing, and recreation in the Upper Peninsula, the Company treated the new market as a nuisance to railroad operations. It required, for instance, that automobiles be first loaded aboard flat cars before being all01ved access to the ferry. 1 A1ex Bornsdoff, a Finnish engineer, visited the St. Igr!ace in the winter of 1889 and took the concept back to Finland where it Has put to use in the Baltic and enabled Wartsilla to become the world's leading producer of ice breakers. See "Ice Breaking in the Baltic," John L. Hazard, Land Economics, Fall, 1970. 2 George W. Hilton, The Great Lakes Car Ferries, Howell-North, Berkeley, California, 1962, p. 63. A-4 Gasoline tanks had to be drained before loading and refilled at the opposite terminal. The one-way charge was initially an exploitive S40 a car. \,'hat might have become a profitable sideline operation became a subsidized competitor in 1923. Public dissatisfaction with the Company's poor passenger accommodations and high rates led to the establishment of the Michigan State ferries at that date. The later disappearance of the rail passenger service, such as the Lake Superior Limited, virtually put the Company out of the passenger business. 1-:o attempt was made to accommodate potential truck traffic. For a t~ the Company persisted by chartering its ferries out as ice breakers to the La~e Carriers Association. The creation of the federally-subsidized Hackinac Straits Bridge in 1958 eliminated the economic viability of both ferry services. The Bridge Strategy Three other railroads entered cross-river car ferry operations at the Hichigan­ Ontario gateway in pursuit of new markets. The bridge strategv was first conceived· by the Vanderbilt interests who were viewed mostly successfJl in extending the first integrated railroad from New York to Chicago. The idea of the bridge was to extend a similar integrated railroad service under single-line o;,nership between Chicago and a key Eastern point (usually Buffalo) through t~e short-line Ontario. It was attempted by the Buffalo and Lake Huron Railroad (ultimately the Grant Trunk of the Canadian National System) in the 1850's. The Vanderbilt's Canada Southern Railroad in 1873 (ultimately the Nichigan Central Railroad), the Pere- A-5 Marquette Railroad (ultimately the C&O Railway) in the early 1900's, the Canadian Pacific's Land Bridge to the Atlantic (St. John's/Ne.v Bnmswick) in the 1890's, and the Wabash Railways later pushed to reach the Lehigh Valley and other railroads at Buffalo. It is interesting to note that the latter three (~­ C&O, CP, and Wabash) all established river ferry services across the Detroit-St. Clair River which have subsequently operated on reduced scale with the completion of bridges and turmels at both Detroit and Windsor. Three of the railroads which atterrpted the bridge strategy using car ferries to Eastern points also attempted to bridge Lake Michigan by employing cross-lake car ferries to Western markets. The Pere-}~rquette acquired a cross-lake car ferry service in 1900; the Grand Trunk initiated its own lake service in 1903; and the Wabash Railroad took over the Ann Arbor in 1925. Cross-Lake Services The cross-lake car ferry service differend in many respects from the cross- river services. They are obviously longer haul over stretches of water less susceptible to bridges or turmels. They tend to offer direct line haul competition to parallel railroads and highways rather than serve as complementary short-haul extensions. SenE alterations were required in ship design such the elimination of the forward propeller to cut through pack ice, improved accommodations for crew and passengers on the Spar deck, ice breaking bow, and an open stem for aft loading. A-6 It is not surprising that short-line railroads without interline connections through the Chicago hub initiated the cross-Lake Michigan services. The Toledo, Ann Arbor, and Lake Michigan (Frankfort) Railway, predecessor of the Ann Arbor Railroad, for instance, pioneered the car ferry service from Frankfort, Hichigan to Hisconsin in 1892, the year the railroad reached Frankfort. The ferry lines were an integral part of the Ann Arbor Railroad consisting of over half the railroad's mileage and generating some 54 percent of its traffic. The Ann Arbor Railroad had to reach Hest for traffic because it was what some call an "unnecessary 3 railroad" with little traffic originating from on-line points.