That's uh... an unusual choice of locations. HOWEVER, you can take the Ferry from SF to Mare Island https://sanfranciscobayferry.com/
Two weekends is another interesting choice. There are going to be a lot of people, I suspect, who don't want/can't to setup or leave their setups for 2 weekends in a row.
But I'm totally excited, and thrilled it's going to be in 3 months and not an announcement of something next year.
> don't want/can't to setup or leave their setups for 2 weekends in a row.
It sounded like they were short on space, so wanted just half the makers each weekend.
From an email they sent:
> We plan to organize different groups of makers for each weekend.
> Mare Island is a beautiful, historic location on the waterfront where makers can be indoors or outdoors. This venue is smaller in size than the San Mateo Fairgrounds, where we’ve previously held Maker Faire Bay Area. It will limit the number of makers exhibiting as well as the number of attendees per day. That’s one reason why we decided to run over two weekends. At this new location, Maker Faire Bay Area will be less crowded and a more enjoyable experience for families.
Ah. Makes total sense. Shall be interesting and exciting to see how it goes. Hopefully they can get a good set of makers to exhibit. With only three months notice I wonder how many people will be available, especially those whom might be coming from farther away.
I'm glad to know that the ferry exists, and it does look like that it's common for them to offer special event service. My main gripe though is that the special event fare is rather steep for what it is ($36.50 round trip). Sure beats driving up there, but I'd almost certainly be weighing other interesting things to do for that price.
The city are in the process of slowly transitioning the ferries to electric (battery powered and hydrogen fuel cell, based on distance). I believe that there's already a fuel cell ship in limited service.
I learned about it by attending the port of SF public meetings where they've recently been discussing the Sea Change Ferry, the first hydrogen fuel cell powered public ferry in the world that they will be starting service with soon. It's so cool, they've designed a floating fuel barge that takes power from the Port side power connections they have that get their power directly from hydroelectric sources. The fuel barge takes that clean electricity and disassociates bay water to generate the hydrogen to power the ferry. The ferry then stops by every so often and picks up more hydrogen.
anyway, in those meetings they've casually dropped "everyone knows that the existing ferries ate worse than driving" like it's common knowledge among the SF port folks. I'm sure they did a study on it that we can find but my 2 cents is that it doesn't really matter if they look better on paper when full or not, etc. What matters is the empirical average, we have the data. Co2 emissions per passenger mile is the metric that matters and what I'm assuming they used to make the comparison. That way the specifics of the ferry or the car, and their loading don't get factored in.
It would be interesting to see if that calculation was with average ferry load, and if there's is any tip over with some reasonable increase in ridership. During rush hour the ferries are packed already, but I find that people in the US leave the car at home only as a last resort.
I'm also thinking that when assessing regional impact of transportation the analysis should be end to end: if a ferry is slightly worse, but then you arrive and are walking around or taking an electric bus/tram, then on the whole it might be lower emissions for that one trip than driving, with the additional external benefit of one less car in an urban environment (fewer harmful particulates, fewer cars around which afford us to reshape public space to give more space to pedestrians, cyclists and public transport, less noise, lower chances of collisions, etc). If people within a city are using PT, and 5% come into the city by ferry, does that provide a benefit in terms of CO2 emissions compared to the status quo? I would be surprised if it didn't, but of course don't have numbers in either direction.
Two weekends is another interesting choice. There are going to be a lot of people, I suspect, who don't want/can't to setup or leave their setups for 2 weekends in a row.
But I'm totally excited, and thrilled it's going to be in 3 months and not an announcement of something next year.