Staff writer
sbeveridge@observer-reporter.com
FREDERICKTOWN - A Monongahela River ferry service that has survived for two centuries is expected to be scrapped when a new bridge opens around the bend in three years.
The Ferry Boat Frederick that crosses the river between Fredericktown and LaBelle will become useless and lose the bulk of its traffic to the new Mon-Fayette Expressway bridge when it opens five miles to the north, a transportation study indicates.
"My analysis is that you would be very hard-pressed to justify the continuation of it beyond the expressway," Washington County Commissioner J. Bracken Burns said Tuesday.
"My understanding of nature and economics is that it's going to be a relic of the past," Burns said.
The village of Fredericktown has had a ferry service since at least 1790 when James Crawford piloted a wooden shuttle across the river where Fish Pot Road meets Route 88. Another ferry was dry-docked for a decade, beginning in 1963, when Ed and Betty Bercoski started to lose money on the operation.
The boat in operation was built in 1948 and put into service in 1973 through an agreement between Washington and Fayette counties. Fayette County collects the tolls and hires the pilots to work the 35-ton vessel.
The ferry is the only cable-driven boat of its kind in operation east of the Mississippi River, said Fayette Commissioner Vincent A. Vicites.
A motor using a pulley system navigates the boat across the 400-foot channel in three minutes along a steel cable anchored to both riverbanks.
"It's historic," Vicites said. "It's worth preserving."
Burns disagrees, saying the boat isn't attractive or a cultural or historical monument.
"It isn't exactly a thing of beauty," Burns said. "It had a function. If it loses its function, you pull the plug."
The two counties obtained a $950,000 federal grant two years ago to rehabilitate the ferry before anyone realized the bridge was going to be constructed. Another $100,000 has been earmarked for the work from the state, and Fayette and Washington need to each contribute another $85,000 toward the project, Vicites said.
The state Turnpike Commission didn't announce until last year that it would build the $95 million bridge in the Denbo Vesta No. Six area to complete the expressway between Centerville and Uniontown.
About the same time, Burns said, he asked the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission to conduct a feasibility study on keeping the ferry after the bridge opens in the spring of 2012. The commission is responsible for recommending to Harrisburg the transportation needs for the nine-county region.
"The whole traffic situation changes dramatically," said Burns, who can't justify now spending any money on the rehab project.
The ferry was transporting about 50 cars a day before 2004 when the new State Correctional Institution at Fayette opened in LaBelle.
Now, as many as 200 cars a day make the trip across the Mon on the boat, ferry pilot Larry Rutherford said last week.
The counties just raised the fare from $1.50 to $2 per car to board the ferry. It is expected to cost a motorist traveling from Fredericktown $1 to pull on and off the new expressway to avoid the ferry. The new bridge also will reduce the ferry detour from Fredericktown to the prison from 32 miles to 10 miles.
A group of men at Bower Brother's Lounge at the Fredericktown entrance to the ferry said Thursday that most of the boat's traffic originates from the south in Greene County.
"They pack them on there," said bar patron Doug Palmer of Fredericktown. "It's something to see."
He said the red and white boat has the capacity to hold eight cars, that vehicles are lined up at a steady pace each workday from 6 to 8 a.m.
"They ought to run it even at a loss," said Scott Bower, a co-owner of the bar. "That would be the right thing to do."
He said local residents and ferry users will likely speak out in anger if the ferry is pulled from the Mon.
"There will probably be a fuss," Bower said.