NYC Ferry riders will get direct boat rides between the Bronx and Rockaways, as well as Staten Island and Brooklyn, starting next month, the city Economic Development Corporation announced Monday.
Officials said the new routes will take effect on Dec. 8, filling in major gaps in the city’s budding ferry service.
Brooklyn and Staten Island politicians have for years called for a ferry connection between the two boroughs, providing a mass transit alternative to the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which is only accessible by car. The other new route, which will run from Throgs Neck to the Rockaways, will provide a two-hour connection between the Bronx and the Queens beachfront.
The EDC is also making changes to the ferry's East River route, which officials said would make the service more efficient.
“The optimized routes will shorten commuter times, provide passengers with more places to go and improve the overall efficiency of the system,” EDC President and CEO Andrew Kimball said at a news conference along the East 34th Street ferry landing. “Not only is this good for passengers, it's good for the system.”
The new NYC Ferry map goes into effect on Dec. 8, 2025.
After launching in 2017, the NYC Ferry system faced scrutiny from fiscal watchdogs who criticized the service’s high subsidies that burdened taxpayers. The city at the time spent roughly $13 for every rider the service carried.
The per-rider subsidy has since dropped to $8.33, according to Kimball. The decrease came after the agency saw record ridership and increased the fare from $2.75 to $4.50.
Kimball said the service has the lowest subsidy of any public ferry in the country and the agency anticipates it’ll drop another dollar by 2028. He said the EDC will reevaluate the ferry fare every two years.
Monday’s announcement included the release of a new report from the agency that outlined a proposal to add two new stops to the ferry system. One would be in East Harlem at 125th Street — one of Manhattan’s largest transit deserts — along the planned Manhattan Greenway on the Harlem River. The other would be at Bush Terminal in Sunset Park. The EDC didn’t provide a timeline for implementing either proposal.
The report also looked at different sites of potential interest in the future to bring ferry service, including in Canarsie — where locals have long pleaded for a ferry — Chelsea, Far Rockaway, and JFK and LaGuardia airports.
Kimball highlighted the demand from Canarsie residents at Monday’s news conference, saying there were several hurdles to achieve the “very expensive undertaking." He said the existing pier is a federally controlled site that would need coordination with the National Park Service.
