After several years of struggling along and begging for annual renewal of the money to keep the West Seattle Water Taxi alive, it may be that the summer service is inching toward success and maybe even extension of it annual operating schedule.

As the Page One story shows, twice as many commuters are choosing the 12-minute water taxi journey onboard the Sightseer, rather than battling traffic on the West Seattle Bridge or State Route 99 and the viaduct. Where about 50 to 60 commuters a day rode the water taxi during peak hours last year it appears that has increased to around 100 so far this year.

Commuters are moving to the service with 20 percent of riders now going to and from work. The rest are tourists and visitors to West Seattle.

We even have a South Park resident dreaming of a ride up the Duwamish River to the Seattle waterfront on workdays (see the letter below).

Perhaps we ought to be studying the massive walk-on ferry system in Sydney, Australia, where the Sydney Ferries Corporation operates 31 vessels on approximately 110,000 trips that carry more than 14 million people on Sydney Harbour and the Parramatta River each year. The fleet covers over 806,000 miles per year.

Visitors to Sydney first realize that there are no long runs as we have in Puget Sound and that the picturesque Sydney Harbour Bridge chokes automobile traffic. It isn't very pretty, but our viaduct constricts traffic, too, and that could get a lot worse.

A boat fleet offers quick service to and from the downtown in Australia's biggest city.

Our harbor is certainly different from Sydney, but the need for quick water transit may be such that a bit of copying might be in order.