NYC Ferry Route Changes Take Effect: What Do They Mean?

All aboard, ferry people! Your boat is departing in about one minute but, due to some notable route changes that took effect on Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, your journey may not go as expected.

The route alterations follow an NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC) announcement about the changes made this past Nov. 10. The EDC makes lots of announcements, however, some so heavily laden with bolstering, repetitive, boilerplate quotes from politicians and “advocates”—as was recently the case with a proposed Chatham Square redesign in Chinatown—that close scrutiny of what is said and what is omitted is important.

As the old real estate apothegm goes, it’s all about location, location, location. Working our way clockwise around Manhattan let’s examine what changes each ferry stop location has to offer.

East 90th Street: The big news here is the merger of the Soundview – Rockaway Route. The NYC Ferry schedule claims that a one-way journey from East 90th Street to Rockaway, with only single stop in Brooklyn, at Sunset Park (Brooklyn Army Terminal), is 1 hour 35 minutes long; bring a boat book, like Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man (1851) or Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi (1883) and enjoy the ride.

The Astoria Route, which also stops at Was 90th Street, continues as before.

East 34th Street: At peak time (before 10 a.m, and again from 4 to 7 p.m.), the East River Route will run in two parts. At non-peak time and weekends, the line makes all its Brooklyn stops (Greenpoint, North Williamsburg, South Williamsburg, Dumbo) before bouncing back to Wall Street.

A second notable change is that the South Brooklyn Route has been extended here, instead of ending at Wall Street. This comes with a loss too, however, as the South Brooklyn line betrays its name by including only two Brooklyn stops, Atlantic Avenue and Red Hook, before turning around at Governor’s Island, omitting the route’s previous Sunset Park—whose industrial waterfront was long called South Brooklyn!—and Bay Ridge. While this alteration is likely to mostly bother Brooklynites, it’s unfortunate that East Siders don’t have a one-seat ride to actual South Brooklyn.

Stuyvestant Cove: Located a relatively short walk under the FDR Drive from the storied blocks and circles of “StuyTown,”, this stop will see no changes, save those of the Soundview-Rockaway Route above.

Corlears Hook: Serviced only by the South Brooklyn Route, this is the only Manhattan ferry stop NYCHA residents might reasonably use, as Vladeck Houses are here, just across new Corlears Hook Park bridge. Unfortunately for Vladeckers, only the South Brookly Route stops here.

Wall Street / Pier 11: As the NYC Ferry Hub in Manhattan, you can get there from here, though how pleasant that might be if one has to wait is open to question. Briefly, what should be the jewel of the NYC ferry system is utilitarian at best, with staffing an issue. Some employees are fantastic, others surly. Compared with Staten Island Ferry Terminal or the nearby Tin Building, passing time at Pier 11 can be less than pleasant.

Battery Park City: As Redd Foxx proclaimed often on “Sanford and Son” while feigning a heart attack, “This is the big one,” but since the “big one” is the same as Pier 79 above it, we’ll cover it there.

West 39th Street — Midtown West: Instead of forever yo-yo’ing like a ferry-bound Benny Profane in Thomas Pynchon’s 1963 novel V., now West Siders can loop to St. George, Staten Island, to Brooklyn to Wall Street. This is a huge deal, righting a wrongful termination of ferry service between Staten Island and Brooklyn following the 1964 opening of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and creating what should be a fantastic tourist attraction in the process.

In recognition of this landmark event, numerous Brooklyn and Staten Island politicos turned up in St. George on Dec. 8, including US Representative Nicole Malliotakis, State Assembly Member Charles Fall, Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon, Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella, and Council Members Kamillah Hanks and Justin Brannan.

Manhattan to Coney Island—By Ferry?

Though the term-limited Brannan will be leaving office in January, he took the occasion to exclaim, “Next up, we do Coney Island!”

For NYC Ferry watchers, this statement was a pointed finger at the EDC for its greatest failure to date: a planned, built, and abandoned ferry stop at Coney Island.

No, not that Coney Island of Boardwalk renown. Rather Coney Island Creek, a place of sand dunes, surfcasting fishermen, santeria rituals, and a shocking amount of flotsam and jetsam from New York Harbor.

Announced with great fanfare in 2019 with Mayor Bill de Blasio and then Borough President Eric Adams among those present, the project was quickly mired in controversy.

Leaving aside the environmental issues, which were substantial, low tides and ample shifting sand bars made a ferry stop there an absurd and expensive proposition. And so it proved—after the EDC spent a reported $13 million constructing, and then removing, the ferry pier that was never used.

While longtime NYC Ferry director James Wong did speak to CBS News about the Coney Island Creek ferry in early 2023, nobody has ever taken public responsibility for the fiasco.

Further, as of late 2025, all references to Coney Island Creek ferry appear to have been scrubbed from the EDC’s website, just as if it never happened.