The model

Water Roads sells trips, and the passenger buys them. On the first service, Barangaroo to Rhodes in Sydney, the crossing is designed to take 18 minutes against 45 for the same trip by road or rail. The service is designed to behave like a metro, not a timetable a passenger has to plan around.

The ride is part of the product. Foiling lifts the hull clear of the water at speed, cutting drag, wake, and the motion that makes a conventional harbour crossing uncomfortable. Electric propulsion means zero direct emissions in operation and a quieter vessel than diesel allows.

No fare has been charged yet; the first service is targeted for commercial launch in Q2 2027.

A new metro corridor costs roughly A$1.1 billion per kilometre on published Sydney figures, and takes eight to twelve years from announcement to first passenger. The NSW government estimates Sydney loses A$9.5 billion a year to congestion; the national forecast has capital-city congestion cost rising 46 per cent to A$37 billion by 2030.

Urban transport contributes about 16 per cent of global emissions, with road vehicles dominant. The waterway through the middle of these cities is a corridor that needs no land, no tunnel and no track. Delivery is a fleet order rather than a construction programme: months of vessel delivery and wharf fit-out, not years of tunnelling.

The waterway was never the constraint; the vessels were. A diesel ferry carries too much energy and crew cost per seat to price against a bus, so water transit ran on a few large vessels, and on subsidy.

The result is already published. On Stockholm’s Route 89, two years of ordinary timetabled hydrofoil service cut the trip from 55 minutes to 30 and carried 22.5 per cent more passengers. CO₂ fell 94 per cent and energy per passenger-kilometre 88 per cent, as published by the Swedish Transport Administration.

A city holds the waterway, the wharves and berths, and the route approvals a service cannot run without. Water Roads asks a government for access to those. It does the assessment work itself, at no cost and with no call on public money, and putting a city forward commits the city to nothing.

Government pays in one case only. Where it wants a particular route the farebox will not sustain, subsidy is available against value independently verified after the fact, confined to that route rather than standing across the network.

No route has launched, so nothing below is a measured result. Every line is modelled, and says so. A route is run commercially only where the model clears a 40 per cent operating-margin floor; below it, a route runs only where a government asks and pays.

Fares (modelled)

Ticket revenue from operating a route. Fares match the city's existing transport network; no premium is assumed.

Carbon income (modelled)

Revenue from carbon credits generated by the modal-shift and ferry-efficiency savings the carbon impact report sets out. The method is published; no credit price or valuation appears on this site.

Environmental index (modelled)

An environmental-performance index designed to measure every trip as it occurs, and to trace each record from vessel movement through to credit retirement, against ISO 14064-2, Verra VCS and Gold Standard together. It has not yet been audited in service, and this page will say so until it has. Impact explains how the index measures a service.

Energy (modelled)

Revenue from the charging infrastructure the vessels use, including as a grid asset when no vessel is drawing on it.

Route-creation licensing (modelled)

A licence fee for the method used to plan a new service, kept separate from the vessels and the running of any one route.

Subsidy, the sixth line on Investors, sits with government above rather than among the five here. All six lines, each with its caveats, are on Investors.

The route method is called Blue Pathways; it scores a corridor in about two weeks, where feasibility work once took six months. Deep Power, the charging system, is designed to charge on the water, limiting shore-side grid works and approvals.

Water Roads plans every route the same way: schedules and corridors set against real transit and waterway data for the city in question. Sydney came first; a Rio de Janeiro route is now in negotiation, and Lisbon, Tri-City and Lagos are under assessment with the method that produced it.

The method is also the fifth revenue line — a licence fee once a proven method exists for a partner or city to take, which beyond Sydney is not yet true of any route.