There's one big difference that our Los Angeles correspondent seems not to have grasped - for all his eagerness to recount the history of shipping routes that have closed in the face of competition from cheapening airfares.
The Metro del Mare is a network of short rides between Campania's seaside resorts, and doesn't really exist... it's a seasonal project, supported by the local authorities, to promote and sustain the area's tourism, and not an ongoing business or company.
When the Campania Regione decide to run it, they put out a tender for hydrofoil operators to supply the vessels and manage them for the next however many years, and at the end of that everyone walks away. Then the process starts again, or doesn't - which is the point we're at now!
There's no shipping line with a permanent staff in need of a Government handout - like America's car industry or Britain's banks - just an on or off arrangement... much as some places use for the transport of kids to school, old people to hospitals and day centres, etc.
The aim is simple - to cut traffic, and CO2, by keeping vehicles carrying vacationers off the roads as much as possible, especially at times when their numbers would otherwise cause traffic to grind to a halt - doing more damage to the region's tourist industry than the subsidy costs.
Obviously there aren't many of our region's 6 million residents among the 200,000 passengers carried each season, but more would notice its absence - as might anyone else travelling around or through Campania, where the roads are already chaotic in summer.
And the effect would be wider-reaching than just tipping those 200,000 passengers back onto the roads, since the scheme also attracts the European funds that have allow more and more of the local harbours to accept the vessels of other fleets (the Co-op Sant'Andrea, Alicost and the like), and the tenders put ashore by the increasing numbers of cruiseships - which widens the choice of landing places they can offer here, and encourages repeat visits.
No reason someone from LA would know or care about any of that, but those intending to visit may care to do so?
Peter