Tourism

A 91-year-old cruise-ship tourist is suing the Ketchikan Gateway Borough for negligence after his mobility scooter tipped over on a public bus.

The complaint was filed in federal court in Alaska on May 8. It says that Donald Gillingham of Montana and his wife were on a cruise that docked in Ketchikan in September. Gillingham has limited mobility, so they rented a motorized scooter and boarded a public bus.

The complaint states that the elderly man’s mobility scooter tipped over when the bus made a left turn. It also says that Gillingham sustained serious injuries from the fall, though he wasn’t aware of the severity at the time. It wasn’t until he returned to the cruise ship and was later evaluated at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau that he found he’d allegedly sustained three broken ribs and a punctured lung.

Ketchikan’s public buses have internal straps to secure mobility scooters. Gillingham’s attorneys claim that because the straps aren’t mandatory, the driver didn’t require him to use them. The complaint claims the borough owes a duty of care to its passengers, which it neglected by not transporting Gillingham safely.

Gillinghams’ attorneys, Mark and Jon Choate declined to comment on the case in an email.

Ketchikan Borough Manager Ruben Duran also stated in an email that he’s aware of a potential lawsuit, but hadn’t been served any notice.

The complaint accuses the borough of one count of negligence and one count of loss of consortium. The loss of consortium is a charge filed on behalf of Gillingham’s wife, Patricia Gillingham, and alleges that the physical and emotional trauma her husband suffered has eroded the quality of their marriage.

There will be three ships in port on Thursday in Sitka — rather than two — with a total passenger capacity of 9,300.

The latecomer is the Nieuw Amsterdam, which notified Sitka’s port director about a week ago that it was making an unscheduled call. Combined, the three ships have several thousand crew, many of whom catch a shuttle for the seven-mile ride into town. That could raise the actual number of visitors into five figures.

Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz apologized for what is likely to be a wild start to the visitor season.

“So the goal going forward is to not have 9,000,” he said. “A week ago, it wasn’t. This port call was added very late in the agenda. So Thursday will be busy. What a way to kick off the season.”

Eisenbeisz made the announcement at an informal meeting between Sitka’s two governments, which happens a couple of times a year.

Sitka officials at the meeting were wary of a possible citizen initiative that would limit summertime cruise visitation to less than half of last year’s record season. The mayor cautioned the Tribal Council that recent efforts by city hall to establish a Parks & Recreation program, assume responsibility for maintenance of the schools and the Performing Arts Center, and to take over management of the school swimming pool, would all be jeopardized by limiting cruise ship calls.

Eisenbeisz described a simple trade-off: increased tourism or local amenities.

“I think that’s a choice that community can make,” he said. “The other side of not having buses on your streets, is not having a parks & rec program too.”

Tribal Council member Lillian Feldpausch, however, thought the argument was overstated.

“What is it going to take to be able to run at minimum some of these programs?” she asked. “Because that’s kind of like holding people hostage to say, ‘You don’t have these, you know, we don’t get the funding for these, say goodbye.’

Eisenbeisz said it was not his intention to hold anyone hostage, and that more work needed to be done on tourism. Rather than impose a season limit, he believed Sitka could better manage a daily limit, and one day a week with no ships at all.

Municipal administrator John Leach said the city was investigating a regional strategy to manage cruise traffic, because if Sitka enforced a day with no ships, the cruise lines would go to other towns, and possibly increase congestion there. He wanted a solution that didn’t involve the courts or a ballot initiative.

“Because when it goes to the ballot box, there’s, there’s legal implications on either side pro or against,” he said, ” and it’s going to affect another community.”

As for the cruise passengers, no one disputes that their arrival will be both an economic and culinary boost. A new food truck offering Hawaiian doughnuts is parked downtown, along with another specializing in Cuban food.

“Welcome back to all the food trucks as well,” the mayor said. “I’m pretty excited about that.”

Picture a downtown Juneau where housing isn’t as cutthroat to find, businesses don’t close down after cruise ships leave and the pressures of tourism don’t feel so heavy.

That sounds ambitious, but those are the priorities of a plan called Blueprint Downtown. Over the past six years, a commission of Juneau residents has examined every aspect of downtown and created a plan to lay the foundation for the next 20 years. 

Betsy Brenneman, a member of the Blueprint committee, explained the concept at a city planning commission meeting last week. 

“The intent was to nurture the preservation, restoration and revitalization of downtown,” she said.  

Brenneman described it as a vision that could guide everyone from the city government to local businesses in their decision-making.

The plan addresses priorities like housing growth, year-round business vitality and tourism management. It recommends things like revising zoning regulations, increasing public safety measures and completing the Seawalk along the downtown waterfront. 

Some planning commissioners had questions. Member Mandy Cole said she wonders how much “teeth” the plan would have to move the needle on issues like the housing shortage. 

“We’ve done many things to sweeten the pot and still haven’t gotten where we needed to get,” she said. “In my view, this plan is exactly that vehicle for the next three to five years to try and increase housing downtown by various methods.”

Others said they wanted more language in the plan to address short-term rental regulations. 

The commission voted unanimously at the meeting to recommend the Assembly adopt the plan. Ultimately, the Assembly will decide what aspects of the plan go into place and when.

Juneau residents who ride Capital Transit buses to the airport, the University of Alaska Southeast and social service providers on Teal Street will need to find other means of transportation beginning Monday, April 22. 

Last week, the city announced it would temporarily suspend routes 5 and 6, citing a shortage of drivers and maintenance workers. 

Capital Transit Superintendent Rich Ross said they hope to restore service as soon as they can fill the positions. He said he hopes that can happen before July. 

“Our maintenance team has been experiencing staffing shortages for nearly two years now, so a lot of it has more to do with the availability of running buses we have,” he said. “Out of the 18 buses, I’d say on a daily basis three to four of them are down for repairs.”

Route 5, called the University Connector, runs from the Valley Transit Center to Auke Bay and UAS. Route 6, called the Riverside/Airport Connector, has stops at the airport, Nugget Mall and Teal Street.

This isn’t the first time the routes have been suspended in recent years. Ross said they typically have the lowest ridership. 

“The University of Alaska sees significantly reduced activity during the summer months, further decreasing demand for route five. Similarly, Route 6 hasn’t been super heavily utilized,” he said. 

This summer the city plans to start a new “tripper bus” service to help handle the added demand during cruise season. It’s essentially an extra bus that would follow the buses that already go from downtown to the Mendenhall Valley near the glacier.

Ross said the worker shortages won’t stop that new service from happening, but it will scale it down.

“I think we’ll be able to make it happen — right now with our fleet size, we just can’t do what we want to do,” he said. 

More information about the route suspensions — and job opportunities — can be found on Capital Transit’s website.

A group of activists in Juneau filed paperwork on Tuesday in hopes of putting a question on the 2024 local election ballot about whether the capital city should begin enforcing “ship-free Saturdays.”

About 20 people gathered at Marine Park downtown to rally for the proposed ballot initiative as the season’s first cruise visitors were heading back to their ship after a few hours in town. Afterward, advocate Karla Hart and four other residents went to City Hall to file the initiative. It would ban all cruise ships that carry 250 or more passengers from visiting Juneau on Saturdays and the Fourth of July. 

“We want one day where we don’t have buses, where we don’t have helicopters, where we can go to Auke Bay,” she said. “One day a week.”

Hart has long been critical of the growth of tourism in Juneau and how it affects people who live here. She said the ballot initiative should be a wake-up call for city officials. 

“I decided that it seems that the city isn’t able to do things on their own, but that the citizens have the right to ask for these things. And since the city doesn’t seem to have the will to do negotiating on behalf of making life better for the residents, then we can,” she said.

At a tourism panel last week, Cruise Lines International Association Alaska spokesperson Renée Reeve said ballot initiatives are a big concern for cruise lines. She said negotiated agreements with the city often take longer but are better for the community.

“We don’t turn on a dime, and it may take a little bit longer for us to come to the decisions and for us to make decisions together. But it’s a far better way than litigation and ballot initiatives, in my opinion,” she said.

The city recently announced it had negotiated a conceptual agreement with cruise lines that could limit the number of daily passengers that come off their ships and into Juneau. But the agreement is still far from final, and no specific numbers have been shared with the public yet. If approved, the limits would go into effect during the 2026 season.

If the “ship-free Saturdays” ballot initiative is passed by voters, that could go into effect next year.

City Tourism Manager Alix Pierce said if that happens, it could have widespread impacts — including on all of the other Southeast communities that cruise ships visit. 

“When Juneau makes a move, even something like daily passenger caps that are kind of vetted and reasonable, it impacts everybody else up and down the chain,” she said. “And we need to be very cognizant of that as we move forward.”

Last season, city officials in Sitka denied a citizen’s petition to put a visitor cap on the ballot, saying the proposed legislation would be unenforceable under the Alaska Constitution. Pierce said she does not know if that would happen with the Juneau initiative. 

“We’ll have something in front of the assembly as soon as we can on what the implications might look like,” Pierce said.

This isn’t the first time activists have tried to pass ballot initiatives to limit cruise ship traffic in Juneau. In 2021, Hart proposed three separate ones aimed at different aspects of cruise ships’ impacts. 

All three failed to get enough signatures to make it on the ballot, but Hart said she’s more confident this time around. 

Once the city clerk certifies the initiative, the group has 30 days to collect nearly 2,400 signatures.

The Norwegian Bliss docked in Juneau Tuesday morning, marking the start of the 2024 cruise ship season. 

Jade Wang and Minhui Li set up their tripod to take a selfie in front of the “Welcome to Juneau” sign on the seawalk. They came from New York. Through a translation device, they said they think the snow on the mountains is beautiful. 

“Wǒ huì tuījiàn zǔguó de péngyǒu lái — I would recommend my friends from the Motherland to come here,” Li said.

Another couple, Jean and Rob Hands, said they came all the way from Scotland to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in Alaska. 

“We always talked about coming to Alaska, so it was one of those last-minute decisions ‘Let’s see if we can go,’” Jean Hands said. “Probably if we’d come later, we might have seen more of the wildlife.”

Rob Hands said he sees similarities between the tourism in Juneau and back home in Scotland.

“We get loads and loads of visitors. The roads become full of campers and caravans, and you can’t get a place for bed and breakfast unless you book ahead,” he said. “And, you know, it is busy but does well for the economy. So that’s a great thing.”

More than 1.6 million passengers are expected to arrive in Juneau from now until late October, when the season ends. On Tuesday morning, a steady stream of tourists walked down the seawalk and into stores downtown. 

The familiar smell of grilled chicken filled the air from Bernadette’s barbecue stand, near Marine Park. Robert De La Cruz said he’d prepared 200 chicken skewers for the opening day, and he hoped they’d all get eaten by the time the ship left. 

“Hopefully, we sell them — as long as it’s not windy and rainy, that’s my fear. When it’s windy and rainy, people don’t get out,” he said. “It’s fun, I’m getting excited this year.”

Brandy Riggs, with Juneau Tours and Whale Watch, stood at a booth along the seawalk. She said visitors had been buying tours to the Mendenhall Glacier and for whale-watching trips throughout the morning. 

“There’s no guarantee that you’re gonna see whales — but we’re definitely offering it still,” she said. “We’ve got some glacier trips going on, and here in the next couple of weeks, we’ll have some city tours going on as well.”

Down Franklin Street, Gary’s Fine Jewelry was also welcoming customers. Owner Gary Totwani keeps the store open year-round, and he said he’s happy to see the tourism season start.

“A lot of people are happy — locals and the people who work for the local stores, they’re happy also,” he said. “So far, so good. I’m excited to welcome the ship, and we’re ready.”

The next ship will arrive in a week.

Katie Anastas contributed reporting.