Steer Davies Gleave successfully assists with new Staten Island Ferry funding.

On September 22 the Federal Transit Administration announced which projects would receive funding under its $3 billion program for resilience projects, to protect transit assets against future disasters in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy.

Following the storm, New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT), responsible for the well-known Staten Island Ferry, applied for funding for new ferries and we're pleased to share that the funded projects include $191.5 million for the new Staten Island Ferries and upgrades to various ferry landings to accommodate the flexible use by the vessels for emergency response.

Steer Davies Gleave was asked by NYCDOT to prepare the application for grant funding, including the essential economic and hazard mitigation analysis that is a primary condition for funding. SDG has been a key advisor to all public sector passenger ferry operators in the region, and this expertise was seen as essential to develop a successful application given that requests for funding under the program far outweighed the available funding meaning whether the NYCDOT request was successful was quite uncertain.

The devastation and human toll caused by Hurricane Sandy on the Northeast United States was unprecedented, including billions in dollars of damage to transit infrastructure. The proposed ferries are not a standard resilience project, but the usefulness of ferries in providing emergency response was extensive following Sandy. The idea here is that the high-capacity Staten Island Ferries could play a major role in emergency response for any future disruption of subway service across the East River to Manhattan.