More than four years after the governor announced the project, the state has gone out for bids to build a replacement for the 61-year-old ferry Tustumena.

The plan is to replace the existing 296-foot-long, oceangoing ferry that serves the region from Homer and Seldovia on the east side of Cook Inlet to Kodiak and out the Aleutian Islands with a new 330-foot ship, running on a diesel-electric hybrid propulsion system, with room for more passengers and vehicles.

The Alaska Marine Highway System estimated the price tag of the new ship at $310 million in a presentation to a legislative committee in February 2025.

At the time of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s announcement of the replacement project in December 2021, the Alaska Department of Transportation estimated the new vessel would cost between $200 million and $250 million.

The bid notice to shipbuilders was posted on the state website on Friday, Jan. 23. Sealed bids for furnishing “all labor, materials, equipment and performing all work” on the Tustumena replacement project will be accepted until May 28.

“The project consists of replacing the Tustumena with a vessel that provides greater capacity, modernized safety features, increased seaworthiness and enhanced passenger comfort,” said the announcement, which gives a project completion date of Jan. 31, 2029.

Most of the funding for the new ship has come through Rural Ferry Program grants from the Federal Transit Administration, funded largely through the Biden administration’s 2023 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the chief proponent of the federal money for Alaska’s state ferries.

Craig Tornga, the ferry system’s marine director, told the marine highway system’s advisory board last July that the state would go out to bid in the fall.

“We got a tired Tustumena that needs a replacement,” Tornga told the board.

The state solicited contractors for the shipbuilding project in June 2022, but no one bid for the work. It took more than three years after that failed effort for the state and its design contractors to come up with new specifications — and win federal approval for the changes — before last week’s bid announcement.

The last new state ferry was launched seven years ago.