NYC Ferry will launch service to Staten Island, Coney Island

The ferry service will hit all five boroughs by 2020

Soon, Staten Island residents will have another link to Manhattan beyond the borough's eponymous ferry and network of express buses. In his State of the City address today, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the New York City Economic Development Corporation plans to implement new NYC Ferry routes, including one that would connect Staten Island to the west side of Manhattan.

According to SI Live, which broke the news, the new ferry service will travel from Staten Island's St. George Terminal to the ferry terminal at Vesey Street, near Battery Park City; from there, it'll travel to Midtown West, ending at Pier 79 in Hudson River Park at West 39th Street. The whole trip will take about 35 minutes.

NYC Ferry will also continue its expansion in Brooklyn and the Bronx: de Blasio also announced new routes connecting Coney Island to lower Manhattan, and an intra-Bronx one that will link Soundview to Ferry Point Park, near the Throgs Neck Bridge. And the Brooklyn Navy Yard will be connected to the system via a stop that will debut on the Astoria route sometime this year.

A map of the new routes is below:

Via NYC Ferry

But don't expect to take these new trips in 2019; according to a release from NYC Ferry, the majority of the new developments—with the exception of the Navy Yard stop—will launch in 2020 or 2021.

Per the release, the city will invest $100 million into its expansion efforts, which will include building new landings in the affected neighborhoods, and adding new boats throughout the system. More details on other funding, and how exactly that $100 million might be allocated, were not available at press time; we've reached out to NYCEDC for more details.

Staten Island borough president James Oddo told SI Live that he believes "there's going to be a lot of Staten Islanders who will use it," and that he'll float the idea of adding express SIR service from the island's southern tip to make it more accessible to those who don't live close to the St. George Terminal.

The expanded ferry service is part of the city's efforts to bring "more and better options," as de Blasio put it, for getting around, which will include bus acceleration and lane enforcement.