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Cities nationwide are expanding ferry services and adding incentives to lure passengers amid increasing traffic congestion on land, according to an article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal (reprint here). Washington’s ferries are mentioned for testing programs to sell tickets online and automatically debiting the cost of monthly passes.

Miami, Washington, D.C., Honolulu and San Francisco are among the cities that have definite plans to expand ferry service, often with private companies. Hurdles include higher costs than other kinds of transit and poor connections between the docks and where people work. Yet the story cites a 4.5 percent increase in traffic in the last year on the Seattle-Bremerton run as part of a national trend.

Locally, ferries are still mostly considered an extension of the highway system. To serve more people, the state needs to look at more ways to encourage walk-on passengers instead of cars and encourage more frquent use. Market forces should be harnessed wherever possible, including by curbing subsidies for roads that compete with ferry service.

Meanwhile Kitsap County wants to add passenger service to Seattle but first needs to pass a tax to subsidize a broad system. The additional service would have regional impact, for example by connecting to cities such as Sequim. The reaction of voters will be a major test.

U.S. and Korean negotiators are arriving in Seattle for talks this week on a free-trade agreement between the countries. Trade-dependent Cascadia should support increasing trade — but not at all costs.

This week’s meetings are the third in a year-long series of meetings over the U.S.-Korea pact. They’re notable in Seattle as the first major trade talks since the collapse of the WTO round in 1999.

But the venue is far less important for Cascadia than the potential long-term impact of a flawed deal. Indeed, many labor groups oppose any trade deal because of the threat to existing workers.

These negotiations shouldn’t be a choice between free trade or no trade. That’s the false premise set up by supporters of the Bush administration’s pursuit of free-trade agreements to create a patchwork of lopsided deals that favor U.S. corporate interests. Such bilateral deals don’t require the sacrifices necessary to make international trade truly work better.

In the current negotiations, Korea wants more market access and the U.S. wants intellectual property rules and financial deregulation. We shouldn’t settle for that kind of bilateral horse trading. As host, Cascadia officials should instead insist that the U.S. put its will behind a comprehensive trade pact — through the WTO — that would benefit all parties.