The Providence-to-Newport ferry service is set to end Oct. 16. The 68-foot catamaran cruises at 30 knots and can carry 146 passengers.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority says it will try to keep its ferry service, for nine years a way to have fun while getting from here to Newport and back, running next year — although its prospects aren’t bright.

The authority says it will solicit proposals from ferry companies to operate the service without a government subsidy. RIPTA has been operating it since 2000 using federal grants, now about $450,000 per year, that end this fall.

RIPTA says it would cost about that much per year to keep the ferry running, money it doesn’t have when it is expecting to cut its regular bus service to balance its budget.

Unless something turns up, such as a private operator willing to run the service without a subsidy or a grant, the authority has said the service stops with the end of this season on Oct. 16.

The ferry has been a spot of fun on the state’s increasingly gloomy transit map. Since 2000, it has offered a way to have a good time getting to Newport, replacing time on the highway and finding parking in Newport with a great view of Narragansett Bay, its boats, lighthouses and shoreline. On a busy day, you need to show up at the dock early to get a seat on the sunny and windblown top deck.

“Once it goes away, it will probably never be back,” said Henry Kinch, RIPTA’s deputy general manager, who has worked on the service since its beginning. “It’ll be a sad day for me personally.”

Kinch called the ferry “the mark of a good transit agency,” to link different kinds of transit. The ferry connects to bus service on both ends.

Kinch said that he expects to have a request for proposals ready for bidders within a few weeks, and that it will ask potential operators to develop schedules and fares, perhaps for three or four roundtrips per day, “to see if the numbers make any sense.”

RIPTA officials acknowledge that keeping the service going is a long shot; there are doubts that a ferry service operating with such a large government subsidy can become a money-making proposition. Kinch said he expects only a few proposals “if anybody bids at all.”

If the ferry service does end, “It’ll be a great loss to the state of Rhode Island,” said RIPTA board member William Kennedy.

“RIPTA gets more compliments on the ferry service than on any other service they provide,” Kinch said.

Attempts to keep the ferry operating using state money collapsed in the last session of the General Assembly. Bills were introduced in both houses to appropriate money, $450,000 in the House and $500,000 in the Senate, to pay for another year of ferry service. Both bills went nowhere.

The Newport tourist industry is backing continued ferry service, but far less vigorously than its successful campaign to keep trolleys operating in the city.

The ferry, named the Ocean State, is a 68-foot diesel-powered catamaran that cruises at 30 knots, carries up to 146 passengers and leaves a frothy white wake that makes the ferry visible from miles away and entertains children riding on the upper deck.

New England Fast Ferry, which is based in Boston, operates the service for RIPTA. It also operates ferry service from New Bedford to Martha’s Vineyard.

In Providence, the ferry docks off Allens Avenue. In Newport, it uses the state pier in the northeast corner of the harbor.

Slightly more than 47,000 people rode the ferry last year. Ridership is somewhat lower this year, apparently because of bad weather and perhaps also because of a $3 fuel surcharge that hiked the price of a one-way ticket to $12.

The transit authority had spun what was originally supposed to be a three-year federal grant into three installments covering nine years. The funding was from a federal Department of Transportation program intended to demonstrate air-pollution control, a reduction in traffic congestion and intermodal transportation.

blandis@projo.com