The new year ushers out two of New York City’s ferry services and welcomes a new one.

As of Tuesday, commuters who live near the riverfront in Queens and Brooklyn will no longer be able to skip the subway and cross the river on scheduled boat service. New York Water Taxi suspended service on the East River until May 1, saying wintertime ticket sales would not cover its costs of operation.

The company will continue to operate ferry service on the Hudson River, between Lower Manhattan, Haverstraw and Yonkers, through the winter.

The shutdown on the East River put a damper on the holiday for some commuters who have come to depend on the water taxis for access to Manhattan.

“We’re certainly going to miss it,” said Kirk McDonald, a financial analyst who moved in August with his roommate, Steven Schey, from Murray Hill in Manhattan to Schaefer Landing, a condominium complex in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

“I use it every day,” said Mr. McDonald, who was returning by water taxi from running errands in Manhattan with Mr. Schey on Monday. “The idea of taking the subway is not appealing in the least.”

Mass transit that would pull up to the dock out back was an important “incentive to buy here,” Mr. Schey said of Schaefer Landing, which is on the former site of a Schaefer beer plant.

To lure the water taxis, the developer agreed to make monthly payments to subsidize the service for the residents, said Tom Fox, president of New York Water Taxi. Only about 60 residents regularly ride the boats, and even with the subsidy, their tickets do not cover the rising fuel costs and other expenses, Mr. Fox said.

“We’ve been losing money for too long now,” Mr. Fox said, adding that his fuel costs had risen by $1 a gallon, or about 30 percent, since last winter.

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He suspended the service two winters ago, but resumed it last winter because city officials were considering doing more to support intracity ferry service. But the city has not decided to subsidize ferry service, choosing instead to build large terminals.

Still, city officials have left untouched about $4.4 million in federal funds that Congress appropriated in 2005 for building a network of water taxi docks in the city, said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat. One of Ms. Maloney’s staff members met with city officials two weeks ago in an effort to persuade them to spend some of that money, she said Monday.

“It’s been on a priority list of the city to have water service, but they haven’t moved on it,” Ms. Maloney said. The city has said it still has the matter under consideration.

Joan Libby, another resident of Schaefer Landing, organized a rally over the weekend to protest the shutdown, but she lamented that “between Christmas and New Year’s, it’s hard to mount a campaign.”

Tuesday also marks the end of more than a half-century of ferry service to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island by Circle Line Downtown. The National Park Service, which operates the two monuments, chose a California-based company, Hornblower Yachts, to succeed Circle Line last year.

After some delays, Hornblower was making preparations Monday to take over the service on Tuesday morning with a small fleet of mismatched boats that it bought or rented in the last few months. Hornblower plans to buy Circle Line’s fleet, but the two sides are still mired in a dispute about the price.

One of its boats, the Freedom, arrived early Friday morning after a 41-day, 6,550-mile journey from San Francisco by way of the Panama Canal.

“We really made very good time,” said Edward Jerbic, who captained the Freedom and slept in a tent on its deck.

Terry MacRae, the chief executive of Hornblower, said his new staff of about 100 people would be ready to start on time, but he added that he was hoping for light demand on the first day.

“We hope they’ll give us a few days to warm up and get good,” he said.

via New Yorkers Crossing East River Lose Water Taxi for the Winter – New York Times.