The North Carolina Ferry Division operates vessels on routes along the eastern coast of North Carolina. The routes serve diverse populations, ranging from routes with substantial tourist/visitor customers to routes with primarily daily commuters. The Ferry Division is also responsible for operating a fleet of support vessels which perform marine maintenance and dredging activities. Additionally, the Ferry Division operates a shipyard for vessel repairs, located in Manns Harbor. A 2020 study (NCDOT RP 2018-11: Economic Contribution of the North Carolina Ferry System) estimated the economic contribution of the Ferry Division operations. An updated study is needed to fully describe the contribution of the Ferry Division on the local, regional, and state economy since the time of the previous study.
The project will seek to understand customer demand, customer characteristics, and the resulting economic contribution relating to usage of the NC ferry system. Additionally, this project will investigate the economic contribution of the operation of the ferry vessels, dredging activities, and the shipyard. Three essential data sets will be used to derive the economic contribution values: 1) surveys of passengers (conducted in this study), 2) traffic demand data (from the NC Ferry Division), and 3) operational and capital expenditures (from the NC Ferry Division). The research team also plans to use cell phone data to validate survey findings and acquire additional economic insights. The final deliverables will include a route profile of traffic data and economic contribution for each of the routes, based on passenger spending/economic benefit derived from their use of the ferry route and the operational and capital expenditure analysis of the system.
