Sailabration Means Big Business For Baltimore's Water Taxis
BALTIMORE (WJZ)-- If you were downtown near the water over the weekend, you had a lot of company. If you got around on the Baltimore Water Taxi, you were part of a record-setting weekend.
Ron Matz has more on how thousands of people navigated through Sailabration.
Tall ships and sunshine brought a sea of people to downtown Baltimore for the Star-Spangled Sailabration. Thousands got around on the water.
"We came to see my uncle. We're getting in line for the water taxi. We're going to see some ships," said visitor Marianne Rogowski from Huntersville, N.C.
The Baltimore Water Taxis carried nearly five times as many passengers as on a normal weekend.
"We actually capped our ticket sales at 4,500 passengers per day over the weekend. It helped us move everyone efficiently as possible," said Zach Rogers, Vice President of Baltimore Water Taxi.
Even as Sailabration comes to a close, folks were talking taxi as they headed over to the ceremony at Fort McHenry Monday.
"We're taking the water taxi today. We thought about driving around the Harbor to get there, but the water taxi is a nice straight shot, so we are hopping on board," said water taxi customer John Wolff.
Fort McHenry was a popular destination for water taxi customers.
"We moved over 21,000 people [since Wednesday]. This is a record for our service. It was absolutely outstanding for us. Fort McHenry was a very big draw. Saturday we took 1,066 passengers to the Fort and on Sunday we took 980 passengers there," said Rogers.
The influx of people led to a less than typical water taxi weekend.
"We experienced long lines and significant waiting period and did our absolute best to move everyone as quickly as we possibly could. However, we're not used to having a million people at one time," said Rogers.
Even with the long lines, nearly everyone says it's worth the wait.
"People were very pleasant and very patient. We thoroughly explained that we were doing our best to move everyone as quickly as we could. We have 13 taxis. I think we dealt with it fairly well," said Rogers.
The 21,000 passengers since Wednesday was a new five-day record for Baltimore Water Taxi.
