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The Port Authority is paying for a six-week pilot program that will offer ferries from Jersey City to New York.

(Jersey Journal file photo)

To help PATH riders stranded by the weekend closures of the World Trade Center and Exchange Place stations, the Port Authority is starting a six-week ferry service between Downtown Jersey City and Lower Manhattan starting this weekend.

BillyBey Ferry Co., operating as NY Waterway, will offer $2.50 one-way ($5 round-trip) service from the Paulus Hook Terminal to the World Financial Center Terminal. The reduced cost will save ferry riders a few bucks each trip, and it’s the same as a PATH ride, the Port Authority notes in a press release.

Children 5 years old and younger will ride free. Bike riders can board with their bikes for an additional $1.

Since the Exchange Place PATH station will be closed when the weekend ferry runs, PATH riders hoping to get from Newark, Harrison or Jersey City into Lower Manhattan will have to exit at Grove Street and hoof it about a mile to the Paulus Hook Terminal, which is at the foot of Sussex Street.

This new service will run from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, with ferries scheduled to depart every 15 minutes. The last ferry will depart Paulus Hook at 9:45 p.m. and Lower Manhattan at 9:53 p.m.

For the duration of this six-week pilot program, riders will not be able to buy tickets online.

The World Trade Center Ferry Terminal is located at end of Vesey Street.

Candice Osborne, who represents the Downtown on the City Council, has been lobbying the Port Authority for discounted ferry service since the bi-state agency announced the PATH shutdown last month.

In a statement, Osborne called today's announcement about the ferry service a "breakthrough," adding that there's still more to do to get "cost-neutral" transportation from Jersey City to Lower Manhattan on the weekends.

"When we first began calling for meaningful change on this, I heard over and over that we were wasting our efforts: that lost service was also a lost cause," she said. "But something both my mother and my Jersey City neighbors taught me is that if I don’t push for fair treatment, I won’t receive fair treatment."

The agency says it needs to close the two PATH stations nearly every weekend this year, and possible longer, to make way for federally mandated changes to its safety system.