Port Staney-Cleveland ferry

[Stephane Dumas]

Is not related to the Lake Erie bridge idea mentionned at https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=3978.0 I taught it might desserve its own thread. I spotted this info at http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=185421 about the idea of a ferry linking Port Stanley, Ontario to Cleveland. http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/09/changes_in_canada_revive_hopes.html

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- In 1962, after five years of operating at a loss, the Michigan Ohio Navigation Co. shut down the nine-deck luxury ferry S.S. Aquarama that ran between Cleveland and Detroit across Lake Erie.

And for the nearly 50 years since then, transportation planners and business visionaries have been trying to resurrect the idea of a cross-lake ferry to Canada, without success.

A sign posted a few years ago in a Port Stanley, Ontario, storefront reflected the local sentiment for the ferry as "one of those ideas which refuses to go away."

William Friedman, the new chief executive of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, thinks there are good reasons for that.

He said the time has never been better for a cross-lake ferry service. It would be profitable without government subsidies and provide a faster, cheaper and environmentally cleaner way to move cargo on trucks and people in cars between the two countries, Friedman said.

U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette of Bainbridge Township agrees and said nearly $7 million in federal government grants remains earmarked for ships and a terminal for the first Northeast Ohio port city that succeeds in nailing down a ferry deal.

"I still think it's the way of the future," LaTourette said in an interview last week. "First and foremost, a ferry would provide a boost for the economic competition of the region. It would be great for jobs, especially in the auto-parts industry."