It's a launch: Seattle-Bremerton fast ferry starts service

In a region where traffic congestion is making commutes longer and longer, one commute just got shorter. It now takes half an hour to get from Seattle to Bremerton.

Kitsap Transit’s fast ferry service began Monday morning.

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The Kitsap Transit fast ferry skips across the water, leaving the state ferry in its wake.

Carly Atkisson has been taking ferries to get to daily medical appointments.

With the fast ferry, she says it’s a scheduling nightmare no more. “This has saved me so much because normally I would have had to cancel something or push it back, so now I can hit everything I need to hit."

Kitsap Transit says the ferry did its job without drama.

But there were small delays because it is using King County’s dock and King County gets first dibs for its ferries.

But passenger Michelle Yeoman said she was pleased.

“It’s fantastic. It was easy to find, this month apparently is free, so they give you your boarding pass, you don’t know what you’re doing, but you walk on anyway. And then you get on and you go. And we should be there very shortly.”

Bremerton has much cheaper housing than Seattle.

And now it has a ferry that can get people around faster.

We’re about to see what that means in our congested and expensive region.