By the end of this year, P&O Ports North America, which runs the Hudson River terminal under an agreement with the city's Economic Development Corp., expects that 230 cruises will have departed from New York, with passenger traffic at 630,000. That figure is slightly higher than two years ago, when 239 cruises left.
Next year, passenger traffic at the terminal is expected to exceed 750,000 people, Boyle estimated, thanks in part to the new ships. And in 2004, Cunard Line, also owned by Carnival, is expected to introduce the 2,620-passenger Queen Mary 2, which will be the world's largest ocean liner and will assume the trans-Atlantic route traveled by the Queen Elizabeth 2, from New York to Southampton, England.
The cruise lines would like to see the passenger ship terminal refurbished and expanded. The major cruise lines, together with P&O Ports, paid for a study projecting that by 2010, passenger traffic at the terminal will nearly double.
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