
Well shucks, the initiative to have one day per week for the community did not pass. With mega cruise ships getting the door slammed in their faces around the world; Bar Harbor to Barcelona, Key West to Amsterdam, major interests trying to soak the last tourist dollars out of the Alaska run were primarily from outside Alaska. Industrial tourism discharged $600,000 to block this initiative in our town while local advocates who put it on the ballot spent less than $1,000. So, it was a good effort on the locals’ part.
https://alaskabeacon.com/2024/10/02/in-alaskas-local-elections-a-cruise-ship-limit-fails-races-are-close-and-santa-claus-returns/
As far as my little column about the well-known dangers of this bloated waste of resources to tourists themselves; local friends correctly pointed out some pieces of Juneau’s cruise dock Jenga game were missing. This was due to word limits for opinion columns in the Empire. Since we’re free of that constraint we can throw more into the mix and give it a stir. I’ll keep this section open and add dangers as they come to light.
Mt Roberts Tram: Several people have mentioned the tram. Built in 1996. Second steepest tram in North America. The lower terminal sitting at the cruise ship docks is built partly on pilings partly on fill.There are two cars, one on each side. One goes up as the other goes down. They pass each other in the middle. Each car can carry 60 people fresh off the all you can eat buffet dished up on their respective mega ships. Think of the tonnage there. That’s in addition to the cars themselves. Add to that the weight of the cables! Each cable is 3,526 feet long up–plus 3,526 feet down. The haul cable operates at 30,050 pounds of tension on each side. Two additional track cables guide each car. On these three cables the cars rise to 1800 vertical feet.
Dredging: Twenty years ago Juneau removed 2,400 yards (about 3,600 tons) of bottom from in front of the pilings. Bigger ships need more draft ya know. Dredging is accomplished with a heavy clamshell bucket on a wire rope . The bucket is dropped to the bottom kerplunk with it’s mouth open. The mouth closes around the substrate as the bucket is retracted. Then the bucket of muck is brought to the surface and dumped onto a barge which is towed someplace for disposal. When you swim over a dredged bottom it’s like walking over a field that’s been carpet bombed. It’s not smooth. Eventually the craters in soft bottom will fill in.
https://dec.alaska.gov/Applications/SPAR/PublicMVC/CSP/SiteReport/3269
The Petri Dish: Cruise ships generally are giant floating petri dishes packed more densely than a Mumbai slum with crews and travelers from all over the world. It’s common for people, sometimes hundreds of them, get sick on cruises. Norovirus, covid, flu, Legionnaire’s Disease hepatitis A…You can follow cruise ship illness outbreaks, along with fights, fires, groundings, rapes, break downs, dock rammings, killing whales, and other cruise ship events from around the world at Cruise Junkie’s ‘Events at Sea’.
http://www.cruisejunkie.com/events.html
Fall: The reason fall cruises to Alaska are called ‘Grim Reaper Tours’ is the weather gets bad, even for here, so the industry lowers rates, for people who have Alaska on their bucket list. Mega ships are now invading Alaska 7 months of the year. Inevitably, some of those cruises will cross big open water like Dixon Entrance in rough conditions that are common in fall. Shore excursions, like flight seeing are cancelled in bad weather, some tours and tourist venues have already left town for the winter, so end of season people may end up milling around in the rain, or get herded onto tour busses to see Mendenhall Glacier, which they may not see if it’s fogged in.