Overview & visitor information
The Staten Island Ferry is a municipal transit service connecting Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan with St. George Terminal on Staten Island. New York City has operated the route since 1905, and the free, roughly twenty-five-minute crossing runs across 5.2 miles of the Upper Bay throughout the year.
Orange ferryboats leave the Manhattan skyline behind, pass Governors Island and open broad views toward the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Brooklyn, New Jersey and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. Working tugs, ocean-going ships and smaller ferries make the harbor an active transport landscape rather than a fixed panorama.
Large interior cabins and outdoor deck areas reflect the service's primary role carrying commuters, not selling a narrated cruise. Whitehall and St. George terminals absorb crowds into subway, bus and rail connections, so the scenic crossing remains embedded in the daily public network linking New York's least centrally connected borough with Manhattan.
