Sun photo/Michael Dresser                     

Jamie Kendrick, deputy director of Baltimore's Department of Transportation, passed along some figures showing that the city's commuter water taxi service between Locust Point and Fells Point has been building up some more-than-respectable numbers.

Kendrick said the city's goal for the service was to have 75 boardings a day until it could supplement the service with a land-side shuttle, with the expectation that would grow to 150 once that service was in place. But Kendrick said that even without the shuttle, the weekday water taxi is getting more than 150 boardings a day.

The city inaugurated the service in early May. Ridership figures provided by the contractor, Harbor Boating Inc., show that the service has regularly exceeded 800 boardings a week since late June. One day in July, it reported an astonishing 327 boardings for the less-than-five-minute crossing between Fells Point and Tide Point.