From 2004 until early 2018, six small passenger boats ran along The Woodlands Waterway in Town Center. Their official name was the Waterway Cruisers, but most people, newspapers included, called them the water taxis. Each boat was 35 feet long and carried 35 to 40 passengers.
How the boats got started
The Waterway began as a transit corridor drawn on a notecard in 1972 by planner Robert Heineman. Construction started in 1999, the Waterway had its grand opening in 2002, and in 2004 it was extended to The Woodlands Mall with a turning basin and a water taxi stop. Boat service began the same year, run privately by Water Taxi, Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In its first fall the boats ran every 10 to 15 minutes, from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week.
Who ran them
The Woodlands Development Company owned and operated the boats for several years. In 2011 it gave the fleet, valued at $800,000, to The Woodlands Convention and Visitors Bureau, now Visit The Woodlands. The boats were renovated in 2010 and 2011, and Brazos Transit District maintained and ran them from a boathouse at Lake Robbins Drive and the southbound I-45 feeder road. A ride cost $5 in 2014.
Ridership was a long-running argument. In 2015 the Township board stopped funding the program, and one director pointed out that the free Town Center Trolley covered nearly the same route faster. In March 2016 the bureau picked Waco River Charters to take over the fleet.
Hurricane Harvey and the last trips
Harvey’s rain in 2017 ruined the boats’ electrical systems. A limited service came back on Dec. 8, 2017, but by February 2018 it had stopped for good. Visit The Woodlands canceled its contract with the last operator, Waterway Events LLC, that January and decided the boats would cost too much to restore. By then they had logged more than 434,000 trips and carried about half a million passengers.
In November 2018 a crane lifted the boats out of the lower canals near The Woodlands Mall. They were donated to a Florida company that planned to refurbish them.
Getting on the water today
The Waterway now runs 1.8 miles, from Hughes Landing on Lake Woodlands to The Woodlands Mall. Riva Row Boat House, run by the Township on the lower Waterway at 2101 Riva Row, rents kayaks, paddleboards, water bikes and swan pedal boats. Lakes Edge Boat House at Hughes Landing rents kayaks, paddleboards and water bikes (water rentals on Visit The Woodlands). To ride instead of paddle, the free Town Center Trolley loops through Town Center with stops at Hughes Landing, Riva Row Boat House, Town Green Park, The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion and Waterway Square.
For more on how the community was built, see the History of The Woodlands.