BREMERTON — Kitsap Transit announced Tuesday that it will begin two-boat fast ferry service between Bremerton and Seattle beginning later this month.

Starting Feb. 24, two ferries will operate concurrently on the Bremerton-Seattle route. The move adds 24 sailings on weekdays during peak commute hours, according to a statement from Kitsap Transit.

“One of the challenges we've had with the Bremerton route has been not enough seats if you will,” Kitsap Transit executive director John Clauson said. “By doing this two-boat operation I think that's going to help us respond better to the demand that we're going to see.”

The new schedule is the same one the agency used in September, when it tested two-boat service for four weeks between Bremerton and Seattle. All sailings on the second vessel will be available for walk-ons only, meaning riders cannot reserve seats on those sailings.

Kitsap Transit ran the test schedule last fall after taking delivery of two new high-speed catamarans, the Reliance and Lady Swift. During the four-week period, researchers monitored the shorelines of Rich Passage for any potential damage caused by the ferries’ wake.

The results from consultant Blue Coast Engineering showed “no discernible response” to additional sailings, according to the statement.

“We look for evidence of systematic change,” coastal engineer Jessica Côté said in the statement. “And we don’t see any evidence to date. In other words, the changes in beach volume after Kitsap Fast Ferries began service are no different from the seasonal changes in beach volume we recorded before Kitsap Fast Ferries started operation.”

A two-boat schedule will run 140 one-way trips per week between Bremerton and Seattle during the summer, which includes 20 Saturday trips. The route usually operates 80 one-way trips per week during the winter and 100 per week on its summer schedule.

The additions include trips that split the most popular commuter sailings from both Bremerton and Seattle. New 6:05 a.m. and 7:25 a.m. sailings from Bremerton and 4:25 p.m and 5:40 p.m. sailings from Seattle proved popular with riders during testing.

“It's something that obviously King County as well as (Kitsap Transit is) familiar with and it worked well when we did our test,” Clauson said. “We had surprising, very strong ridership during that period.”

Silverdale resident Art Ness said he moved to Kitsap after learning about the fast ferry program and has been commuting to Seattle for work since the service's first day of operation in 2017.

Ness works at a clinic in North Seattle, and his variable schedule prevents him from catching the same ferry every day on the way home to Kitsap. The new two-boat schedule provides more flexibility while still cutting time from his commute, Ness said.

"The fact that there is going to be a lot more spaces and it's running every 30 minutes is a godsend for a lot of people," Ness said.

Under the new schedule, the last ferry of the night still leaves Seattle at 7:40 p.m. While the summer schedule includes late-night sailings on Saturdays, some riders have asked Kitsap Transit to add later trips during the week.

Kitsap Transit is only allowed to operate a certain number of sailings a week, a number determined by its consultants based on the observed impact to Rich Passage’s beaches, Clauson said. He added that the agency may add later trips on Friday nights in the future.

“We're being rather conservative and cautious but we're continuing to move forward as much as we can,” Clauson said.

The service’s reservation system has been a consistent source of frustration for most regular riders. Kitsap Transit elected to restrict sailings on the second vessel to walk-ons only to test how the whole system might work without reservations.

“At some point, depending on how it works out, we may have to implement reservations on the second boat, but for now we're going to try it without,” Clauson said.

When WSF ran its service in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Rich Passage homeowners complained of wake damage to shorelines, prompting WSF to discontinue passenger ferry service. Kitsap Transit took on a government-funded wake study. Information from that study led to the design and construction of the Rich Passage 1 ferry and its sister ferries.

As of now, Kitsap Transit has no further plans to expand ferry service from Bremerton, Clauson said. No specific bus route changes are planned to accommodate the extra sailings.

“It was quite impressive that we did the four-week test with two boats without personally doing any marketing whatsoever, and the following that developed rather quickly on that second boat,” Clauson said. “We anticipate that the ridership on that second boat will impress a lot of people.”

Kitsap Transit plans to release the data from the beach monitoring reports once it’s finalized, according to the statement. You can view the full schedule here.