The Cross Bay Ferry is closer to returning — under a new name, run by a local company.
Staff for the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority have recommended Tampa Bay Sea Taxi to man the service between Tampa and St. Petersburg, expected to return fall 2026.
The Pinellas transit authority plans to purchase two vessels using a $4.8 million federal contract. The transit authority board will decide whether to award the contract to the local company, which operates in St. Petersburg and Madeira Beach, at the end of October.
Hubbard’s Ferry, an affiliate company, has spent 24 years operating passenger boats, including a service from Fort De Soto to Shell and Egmont Key. One of the firm’s top leaders sits on Pinellas County’s tourism board. Hubbard’s Marina, which operates fishing tours off Madeira Beach, is also in the portfolio, along with the Friendly Fisherman seafood restaurant.
“They’re a generational Floridian company. They also have the infrastructure,“ said Al Burns, director of procurement for the Pinellas transit agency. “They have a fabricating facility right here in Gulfport to support if the vessel needs maintenance or preventive maintenance.”
The service will have a new name that St. Petersburg city leaders say will position it for expansion: the Tampa Bay Ferry. Leaders at Pinellas’ transit agency have said the service will operate year-round for the first time, possibly with a lower fare than the previous fee of $12 each way.
A conservative estimate of average fare is $7.50, according to bid documents provided by the transit agency. At less than $1.7 million per year, the service is expected to cost about half as much as it did under a previous Boston-based operator.
The future of the service crisscrossing Tampa Bay was left uncertain in April when the previous operator, HMS Ferries, announced that it wouldn’t provide an hourlong ride across the bay through October as expected. The operator tried to replace its current boat with a slower vessel that would lengthen the trek to two hours.
Pinellas County has boosted its portfolio of waterborne transportation in recent years. It also began overseeing the contract for the Clearwater Ferry this year, raising the frequency of service and restoring a dock in Dunedin, where service will expand starting Oct. 9.
One passenger died and 10 more were injured on the Clearwater Ferry after Jannus Landing owner Jeff Knight’s boat crashed into it in April. Knight has since received eight felony charges.
Like the Clearwater Ferry, Tampa Bay Sea Taxi will be responsible for insuring the boats it operates, though the Pinellas transit authority will technically own the vessels. The company plans to take out a general liability insurance policy of $10 million, according to bid documents.
The cities of St. Petersburg and Tampa are expected to commit $350,000 each to the cross-bay service. Hillsborough and Pinellas counties will no longer help pay for the service, though they contributed funding to the nine-year pilot program.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Josh Wostal has questioned whether the service, which netted a record 72,000 riders last season, is cost effective compared to other transit priorities.
But Darden Rice, chief planning officer for the Pinellas transit agency, has said the revived service will cater to residents with improved weekday hours.
The new service will also have a different dock location in downtown St. Petersburg near the Museum of History. The service previously took off further south, near Albert Whitted Airport, for the Tampa Convention Center.
“We’re one of the country’s largest urban metro areas surrounded, and defined by name, by a body of water,” Rice previously said. “It’s really a no-brainer that we would develop this transit choice for our citizens.”