Is the SSA concerned about anyone but itself?

Many people have expressed outrage that, during peak tourist season, the Steamship Authority has decided to continue construction work on the Woods Hole ticket building. This decision was made despite the fact that the work continues to create chaos in the approaches to the SSA site as well as on-site.

The SSA General Manager, Bob Davis, has provided us with an explanation for why we should all be content with his decision to continue the construction throughout the summer. Beyond pouring new concrete, he has explained, the SSA is limiting its work during the summer months to only the interior of the new terminal buildings. This strategy of continuing the project during the summer should shorten the overall construction of the project by a year and a half, argues Mr. Davis.

Mr. Davis’s implication is that, during the summer months, his decision to continue construction work, even in a limited form, will not create any problems or challenges for pedestrians, cyclists, cars, buses and trucks. However, this is far from the case.

As I recently passed through the SSA site, it was clear that the site is poorly managed, is full of chaos, and is not a safe or even remotely pleasant place through which to pass at all. Visitors and residents alike take their lives into their own hands today as they try to maneuver the Woods Hole terminal.

There are no clear sight lines. The car, bus and truck engine idling is incessant. The purchase of a single $14,000 golf cart to move an infinitesimally small number of passengers through the site each day makes little or no difference.

The reality is that if Mr. Davis had been open to building a significantly smaller ticket building, only as large as is needed in an era of electronic ticketing, and as requested repeatedly by the public, the construction project would have been completed years ago, not 1-1.5 years from now. In addition, the SSA could have saved tens of millions of dollars on the project.

The cost of the terminals’ two new buildings, the ticket building and utility building with its massive sheet glass windows, jumped last week from $32 to $36 million. Such spending on these two buildings, neither of which appears to have any redeeming architectural features, is more than extravagant. It is wasteful and disrespectful to all rate payers of the Authority.

It continues to be blatantly clear that Steamship Authority management does not care in the least about those residents and visitors on the ground who must suffer from such outrageous decision-making. The Steamship Authority displays a complete lack of social responsibility. The Steamship Authority is today, without exaggeration, an anti-social agency.

We can only ask when this abuse of town residents and visitors by a legislature-sanctioned quasi-public agency will ever end.

Damien Kuffler

Woods Hole