Planned Jersey Shore Beach Excursion Route Nixed
A proposed high-speed ferry that would have whisked Lower Manhattan residents to the beach at Point Pleasant, New Jersey has been torpedoed by local officials who were concerned that the plan amounted to an end run around town regulations.
The plan, announced in May, had been to run Seastreak catamarans on weekends from Lower Manhattan’s Battery Maritime Building to Captain Bill’s Landing, a public dock in Point Pleasant, adjacent to that town’s boardwalk and beachfront. Priced at $99 round trip, the non-stop excursion was slated to take one hour and 15 minutes, or less than half of what public transportation entails (including multiple changes between subway, NJ Transit, and shuttle buses), and considerably faster than driving in weekend, summer traffic.
But at a raucous June 16 meeting, the Point Pleasant Beach Borough Council voted three to two to block the proposal. Supporters from the local business community welcomed the anticipated influx of visitors, while multiple residents voiced concerns about traffic and crowding. The members of the Borough Council (who had at a prior meeting voted to move forward with exploring a temporary licensing framework for the plan) were more focused on the process by which SeaStreak had sought permission to launch the service on a trial basis, rather than going through the more elaborate procedure required for a permanent ferry service.
“There’s no free trial,” said Council member John Dixon. “There’s no trial period. If you want to have a ferry in this town, you have to follow the process and follow the rules. End of story.”
In announcing the cancellation of the plan, Seastreak’s president, James Barker, said, “we were confident that we had a path to responsibly test this service. The whole purpose of the pilot was to determine whether service was logistically and economically viable before making larger investments and commitments. Without the ability to test the concept on a limited basis as we proposed, it becomes very difficult to move forward. To get to this point after the level of engagement we’ve had is extremely frustrating and disappointing.”
“This was a no-cost, low-risk opportunity for Point Pleasant to test something that could have led to meaningful long-term investment in infrastructure and service,” he added. “That was the entire point of the pilot—to first prove demand in order to justify larger investments and commitments.”
This is not the first time that a planned ferry route between Lower Manhattan and the Garden State has encountered rough seas. In the summer of 2022, another company announced plans for the Elizabeth Fast Ferry, which was slated to begin operating a few weeks later, taking passengers from Pier 15 on the East River to a dock near the Bayonne Bridge, where a shuttle bus would then transport riders to Newark Airport, as well as to the Mills at Jersey Gardens outlet mall and the Elizabeth location of Ikea.
But repeated issues with U.S. Coast Guard inspections of the vessel (which was supposed to become the first in American waters to run entirely on electric power) delayed the plan by weeks, and then months, until it was ultimately cancelled. (In 2025, the Harbor Charger ferry, which links Lower Manhattan to Governors Island, became the first electric ferry in New York waters.)
Editor’s note: Seastreak continues to operate a daily ferry between the Battery Maritime Building and Sandy Hook, New Jersey. The price is $61 round trip, $17 for children 12 and under.