The Cape-May Lewes Ferry fleet will receive major upgrades thanks to federal funds.
Last winter, the Delaware River and Bay Authority received an EPA grant close to $1 million to repower the MV Delaware with new marine propulsion engines. Now, the New Jersey and Cape Henlopen vessels will receive new engines, thanks to a $6 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration.
Since the 1970s, the vessels have been running on marine diesel engines, which exceeded their 30-year life expectancy. Director of Operations Heath Gehrke says it’s necessary to replace them to provide better and more reliable service to DRBA’s customers.
“Any vessel that gets older is like your car, you can repower [it]," said Gehrke. "That’s the brunt of the parts that tend to fail. These engines we were operating years and years. They’re not manufactured new that way anymore. It’s getting more difficult to find parts and there’s more maintenance as you’d expect as they get older.”
An estimated 40 percent of toxic air emissions will be cut due to these improvements.
“We get a little better fuel efficiency, a little bit more speed. And essentially, we go from having 40 year old engines to new engines, so there’s more reliability," said Gehrke.
Gehrke says the new engines also only require overhauling every 30,000 miles as opposed to every 20,000, thus saving maintenance costs. In total, DRBA expects to save $130,000 a year per vessel.
The work on the MV Delaware will soon be completed. The New Jersey will undergo work at the shipyard in the winter of 2017 and Cape Henlopen in the winter of 2018 the earliest. Installation of the new engines takes about four months.
