TAMPA, Fla. — The immediate future of the Cross Bay Ferry was decided during the Hillsborough County Commission meeting on Wednesday.

The service that runs between Tampa and St. Pete’s downtowns will end April 30, after commissioners voted to end the deal with the ferry’s operator.

The ferry service, which previously ran from October to July, was in its initial campaign to operate year-round and was scheduled to operate until Sept. 30. The ferry’s current operating agreement is in its fourth and last year.

The service will now end April 30.

City officials said the operator of the ferry service, HMS, defaulted on their agreement with Hillsborough County and would not be able to provide an equivalent replacement vessel moving forward.

According to St. Pete’s Transportation Director, Evan Mory, the reason the service is ending five months early is because operators wanted to swap out the ferry for a slower boat that would have taken twice as long to cross the bay.

In that memo, Mory states Hillsborough County notified the Cross Bay Ferry operators, HMS Ferries, that its plan to use the slower boat violated their agreement.

HMS missed a deadline last week to remedy the situation.

The decision to terminate would save $102,000, said Mory.

The Cross Bay Ferry is operated regionally between Hillsborough County, the Florida Department of Transportation, the city of Tampa, the city of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County.

It has been in operation since 2021.

St. Pete officials have suggested they would likely request proposals for a new ferry service provider.

At a county commission meeting last month, Commissioner Harry Cohen talked about the company and the commissioners decision to void the contact.

“My understanding is that this probably is more related to the general health of the company itself,” Cohen said. “I believe that they may have gone through a bankruptcy and an ownership change. So I'm not really entirely sure what was behind their decision to change out the vessel.”