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Examiner The Whidbey
News from the Heart of Whidbey Island
THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 2012
VOL. 17, NO. 52
Ferry A whale of a project reservations slow, but smooth By Tristan Hiegler Port Townsend Leader
Ferry officials presented statistics on the new reservation system and discussed July 25 how communication and the system’s speed could be improved. The Port Townsend-Coupeville Partnership Group met last week in Port Townsend. The Save a Spot reservation system was launched June 4 for the Anacortes-Sidney, B.C., route and June 13 for the Port Townsend-Coupeville route. “The system overall is a little bit slower, so there is an opportunity to make improvements there,” said Brian Churchwell, deputy program manager for the system. He said ferry customers provided good data during a recent survey. The partnership group was created in 2010 to facilitate discussion between Port Townsend and Coupeville ferry customers, stakeholders and officials. “Overall, we’ve got a great response from our customers,” Churchwell said. “A large percentage of the people feel it was easy to make a reservation.” According to Washington State Ferries, 33,372 reservations have been made using the new system between June 4 and July 15. From June 18 to July 15, a total of 14,143 reservations were made for the Port TownsendCoupeville route. The system introduced several types of accounts. Guest accounts secure a reservation without storing any personal data, while Universal accounts store payment details. Also available are Executive accounts for businesses and Premier accounts for frequent travelers. Most of the reservations booked through July 15 were with Guest accounts. More than 22,000 reservations were logged by Guest accounts, while Executive was the second most popular account type with 6,994. Universal accounts logged 3,956 reservations and Premier had 274. Guest and Universal account users have to pay a deposit whenever they See FERRY, page 6
Mary Jo Adams photo
Marty Crowley of the Central Puget Sound Marine Mammal Stranding Network, left, Jason Oosterhous, center, and Amelia Lyons lift whale bones from the water at the marina in Oak Harbor. The bones are from a gray whale carcass that was salvaged from a North Whidbey beach earlier this year. The bones had been submerged beneath the dock to allow marine animals to remove the flesh. Volunteers are now cleaning barnacles from the bones, after which the entire set will be sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Oosterhous and Lyons are taking part in marine ecology classes being held at the Pacific Rim Institute for Environmental Stewardship near Coupeville.
Festival parking plan aims to ease traffic By Elisabeth Murray Staff Reporter
With the Coupeville Arts and Crafts Festival just a little over a week away, organizers are hoping a new traffic plan will help prevent the backup that occurred last year in the southbound lane of Hwy. 20 on the approach to Coupeville. Cars waiting to turn onto North Main Street to get to festival parking blocked highway traffic heading south. With a number of popular events taking place the same weekend, the
high volume of traffic on Saturday – particularly southbound on Hwy. 20 – made the trip from Oak Harbor to Coupeville take almost an hour. “The town was absolutely packed,” said Lynda Eccles, executive director
of the Central Whidbey Chamber of Commerce. Nice weather on the peak tourism weekend of the year drew visitors from See PARKING, page 7