This sounds like a "water bus", not a "water taxi". Just send more "land busses" to and from Ballard.

In what Universe does anyone

1) Need to go from Ballard to West Seattle or vice versa?
2) I mean, really, who?
3) Build a fucking subway. Jesus
4) If you gotta get yourself past Shilshole just to pick up the water taxi, what's the fucking point anyhow? So Market/Seaview can have rush hour patterns too?

I don’t know if Ballard needs a water taxi, but I do know the Slog needs a post about the shooting downtown that has the entire city core paralyzed with traffic

This makes no sense. There is no way that running a boat is not astronomically more expensive than buses. Or maybe spend the $$ on a proper tunnel for the new LINK line to Ballard.

Helicopter service to/fro west seattle seems faster and better for Ballard

@1 - yes, I’ve always thought the term ‘water taxi’ is inappropriate for what these are.

A taxi can be called or hailed to pick you up where you are and take you where you want to go; these don’t do that, and are clearly something more like ‘water shuttles’

Where would the terminal in Ballard be? Ray's Boathouse? It seems in the time it would take to get from central Ballard to a water taxi terminal to your destination downtown, you could just take a bus (or walk).

If extrapolating the distance/time from West Seattle to downtown, it looks like Ballard to downtown would take over an hour by "water taxi." Probably a nice thing to do on a weekend but not a very sensible commute.

I-5 does not go through Ballard. You have to go through two neighborhoods (either Phinney Ridge-Wallingford, or Phinny Ridge-Green Lake) to get to I-5 from Ballard. I lived in Ballard for 23 years, and it often took longer to get from Ballard to the nearest I-5 onramp than to then drive from the onramp to Federal Way.

Anyone who thinks I-5 is an egress or ingress to Ballard probably shouldn't be talking about transportation solutions, just sayin'.