The North Carolina Ferry System provides a critical transportation link for North Carolina residents, visitors, and local business owners. Ferry operations in North Carolina can be traced back to several early efforts to better connect both the state’s inner banks with its far-reaching outer banks and as a means for crossing some of the state’s many bodies of water. Today, the state’s ferry services provide visitors access to tourism destinations and enable residents to reach work, school, shopping, recreation, and other key locations. The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) Ferry Division operates 21 vessels on seven routes along the eastern coast of North Carolina. North Carolina ferries transport over 800,000 vehicles, or approximately two million passengers, a year. This makes the NCDOT-operated ferry system the second largest state-run ferry system in the United States. To model the economic contribution of the North Carolina Ferry System, an economic input-output model was developed. To estimate the total economic contribution of the North Carolina Ferry system, expenditure data were collected from 3,770 ferry ridership surveys. Annualized direct expenditures were then input into IMPLAN® to estimate input-output relationships for the local economies and estimate the indirect and induced effects of each ferry route. Overall, this analysis found that the North Carolina Ferry System supports a total of 5,860 jobs, including 3,295 direct jobs, 1,385 indirect jobs, and 1,180 induced jobs. Furthermore, the NC Ferry System supports a total of $217.3 million in labor income and $735.2 million in total economic output. Detailed summaries of economic contribution by route are also presented as an appendix in this report.
