I had this idea 7 years ago: I was in downtown Seattle trying to get back out to Poulsbo. Google Maps told me to take the ferry, because it was 20 or 30 minutes faster than driving around. I showed up at the ferry and realized that the lot was full, and I would be waiting for a couple of hours. I discovered that the ferry published the numbers of cars that had been through the booth, and wondered why nobody at Google Maps was taking schedules and traffic into account when providing routes that included ferries.

But, like many good ideas, I assumed that someone else would solve this problem. Google, after all, has offices in Seattle, and doubtless has people who ride the ferries routinely. Surely, someone with real skills and proper funding will notice this and fix it much faster than I can.

Fast forward 7 years. The directions still assume that you’ll drive to the ferry, where a boat will be waiting just for you, and you’ll drive right on, depart immediately, make optimal transit time, and drive right off the other side. WSDOT has made only minor changes to the website over that time, none of which would have impacted my ability to pull the published traffic numbers and schedules from existing publicly available data. There’s no indication of whether “84 spots remaining” is a lot, or if the ferry is likely to fill before you arrive. Edmonds still has fewer spots behind the booth than there is room on the ferry, so reports that there are spots remaining, even when there are cars backed up to I-5. There are several apps operating in the space, but they’re poorly executed and don’t really solve the core problem. My only regret is not solving this problem sooner.

Ferry Wizard is still basically in Alpha testing, but it’s a tool that I use more often than the WSDOT app. I’ll be implementing a “feedback” form soon, and look forward to getting feedback from users — did it give you good information, what features does it need to be more useful, and so on. In the meantime, happy ferry riding!