A one-seat ride into downtown San Francisco via SMART would be ideal, but the terrain is just not going to make that practicable. The ferries are a better option, given there's none of the cost of constructing and maintaining rails, bridges, tunnels, etc., and service can be expanded and/or tailored as necessary. And ferry ridership is up in the Bay Area: acording to APTA's newest ridership
report, some 21,900 trips are made on Bay Area ferry boats each workday. That is more trips than are made on entire regional light rail systems like Baltimore and Buffalo. It is a real transit option for people in Bay-focused communities.