Beacon to Newburgh Ferry Scuttled

Low ridership, cost drive MTA decision

Commuter ferry service between Newburgh and Beacon will not return after being suspended since January, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said last week. 

NY Waterway has operated the Beacon-to-Newburgh ferry under contract with the MTA since 2005, but the company in March announced that its weekday rush-hour service was discontinued indefinitely due to damage at the Beacon dock. 

On June 23, Evan Zucarelli, the MTA’s acting senior vice president of operations, said during a Metro-North committee meeting that the initial suspension of service was triggered by “typical river icing.” However, subsequent assessments “revealed significant damage” to the floating ferry dock the MTA attaches to Beacon’s pier, “requiring long-term solutions,” he said. 

After reviewing ridership, which had been “steadily declining” prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the $2.1 million annual cost of the service, the ferry will not return, Zucarelli said. An average of 62 riders used the ferry each day in 2024, down from “approaching 250” per day at its peak in 2008, said Andrew Buder, Metro-North’s director of government and community relations. Ridership usually doubles over the summer, but last fall did not rebound to match its numbers from a year earlier, Buder said. 

“Even with that, we don’t see a drop in ridership on the [Metro-North] train correlating to the drop in ridership on the ferry,” he said. “If those people are still using the train, they’re just choosing to get there a different way.”

Bus service costing $1.75 per ride will continue ferrying commuters between the two cities on weekday mornings and afternoons for the rest of the year, after which it will become free. The MTA has been working with New York State to expand the frequency and coverage area of the service, Zucarelli said. When pressed by an MTA board member, he said the agency would consider implementing free bus service before 2026. 

Another factor in the decision, Zucarelli said, is that Beacon is “actively developing plans to activate its dock area for tourism,” while in Newburgh, where the MTA had been using a temporary dock, city officials are preparing for similar growth in 2027 with the opening of the $14.3 million Newburgh Landing Pier.

The MTA’s license to attach its ferry dock in Beacon expired June 30, and the agency notified the city that it did not intend to renew the agreement, City Administrator Chris White said. 

Neal Zuckerman, a Philipstown resident who represents Putnam County on the MTA board, pushed back against the plans during the June 23 meeting. “It is counterintuitive to me that, at the same time you’ve mentioned that both Newburgh and Beacon are enhancing their waterfront, that we are finding that use of the waterfront is not valuable,” he said. 

Zuckerman said that what’s happening on the Newburgh waterfront is “shockingly nice,” while Beacon is a “TOD [transit-oriented development] dream, because it was once a moribund, empty area.” Then, when Dia Beacon arrived in 2003, “it created an extraordinary resurgence” in a community that, because of the MTA, was “an easy one to get to.”

Whether ferry service returns or not, restricted access to the dock has hindered the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which would typically dock in Beacon for at least six weeks out of its April-to-November sailing season. 

Clearwater has had to reschedule school sails aboard the sloop to depart from either Cold Spring or Poughkeepsie, while some fee-based sails for private groups and pay-what-you-can community sails, which draw about 45 people per outing, have been canceled, said David Toman, the organization’s executive director. 

“Our core — the idea of getting people out on the sloop, out on the water — provides a unique impact that you can’t get otherwise,” he said. “It is critically important to be in Beacon and be able to serve the community from that access point.”

Steve Chanks, an art director who lives in Newburgh, often works remotely but goes into his SoHo office three or four times a month. Out of 40 neighbors who met this week to discuss the ferry closure, he said about a dozen rely on the service to get to Beacon and commute to New York City regularly. 

“It’s unfair to have that access cut off,” he said, especially as the MTA implements congestion pricing in hopes of reducing traffic coming into New York City. While the agency has made bus service available, the 10-minute ferry “offers the residents of Newburgh and neighboring areas a fast, reliable and scenic commute to the Beacon Metro-North station that doesn’t add to or suffer from traffic patterns,” he said. “I would think they would want to support this.”