Photo credit: Toronto Star
The City of Toronto has awarded Daman, a Dutch company, a $90 million contract to build two fully electric ships to service Toronto’s islands.
The Toronto Star reports that the first is slated to be delivered in November 2026 and the second in early 2027.
After a crash into a dock in 2022, the Transportation Safety Board found that one city ferry was operating with safety deficiencies.
The new ferries are scheduled to go into service four weeks after delivery to the ferry terminal. However, that timeline assumes smooth sailing.
Kingston’s hybrid diesel-electric ferry, which runs between the city and Wolfe Island, was delivered in 2021 from Daman but only went into service a few weeks ago.
Toronto’s new ferries are bigger and thus will require work at the Jack Layton ferry terminal, at the foot of Bay Street, to install charging stations, electrical infrastructures, and “dock anchoring modifications to the ferry berths to stabilize new ferries while charging,” according to an email sent by the city.
However, the docks on the Toronto Islands won’t need to be modified to enable the ferries’ operation.
