The Alaska Marine Highway System has been having problems with its new reservations website.
The site has gone offline a number of times since its installation late last year. That sometimes impacts the larger ferry system website, which it’s linked to.
Transportation Department spokesman Jeremy Woodrow said the problem involves connecting a state-designed website with one created by an outside contractor.
“They do have fixes in place and then sometimes either something will happen again or there will be another issue that crops up. It’s one of those items that they are working through and they hope to have a permanent fix soon,” he said.
As of Thursday, the system had gone for almost a week without problems. Woodrow said he hasn’t heard of unusually long wait times for those calling in reservations.
He said the website issues have been sporadic.
“The first time it happened, I believe it was over a weekend and it was down for over a day. But most of the occurrences since have been very brief. Sometimes they’re well less than a half-hour or maybe even less than 15 minutes,” he said.
Woodrow said the ferry system continues working toward a permanent solution.
Right now, there are two different systems handling ferry reservations. One is for travel through April 30 and the other for later travel. Details are on the website.
Correction: In an earlier version of this story, the caption to the ferry photo misidentified the vessel pictured. It’s the LeConte, not the fast ferry Fairweather.
