Spokane inaugurates service on City Line, its first bus rapid transit route

Yes­ter­day, in a blaz­ing July morn­ing, hun­dreds of peo­ple gath­ered in Coeur d’Alene Park with dogs, rid­er pass­ports, back­packs embla­zoned with the STA logo, and neon-col­ored shaved ice to wit­ness the inau­gu­ra­tion of ser­vices for Spokane’s biggest pub­lic tran­sit project in years: the City Line Bus Rapid Tran­sit ser­vice, the first of its kind in Spokane, and even the larg­er Inland Northwest.

The ser­vice is a six-mile long bus rapid tran­sit line that begins in Browne’s Addi­tion, a his­toric neigh­bor­hood near Spokane’s Down­town area, and winds through down­town and the Gon­za­ga Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­trict, all the way to Spokane Falls Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege. The route is pro­mot­ed as a form of tran­sit one “doesn’t need a sched­ule for,” because dur­ing peak hours a bus arrives every fif­teen min­utes. (The inter­vals length­en to thir­ty min­utes on Sundays.)

It is the first BRT line in the Inland North­west.

Each City Line stop, illu­mi­nat­ed with local art, fea­tures a screen dis­play­ing the next avail­able bus times, down to the minute. Each bus holds approx­i­mate­ly nine­ty pas­sen­gers, with ded­i­cat­ed sec­tions for those with bicy­cles or mobil­i­ty aids.

And, crit­i­cal­ly, the line fea­tures an all-elec­tric, zero-emis­sion fleet of bus­es that also emit very lit­tle noise pol­lu­tion. (I can con­firm they’re impres­sive­ly quiet!)

Spokane tran­sit offi­cials believe the new BRT line will pos­i­tive­ly influ­ence the city’s econ­o­my and future devel­op­ment. They point to a 2014 eco­nom­ic study, which esti­mates that “over a twen­ty-year peri­od the pro­ject­ed increase to sur­round­ing land and improve­ments val­ues will increase by $175 million.”

The gen­e­sis of the project began in 2005, when the Spokane Tran­sit Author­i­ty (STA) began explor­ing an old pro­pos­al for a revi­tal­ized pub­lic tran­sit sys­tem that resem­bled the street­car mod­els of old Spokane. Orig­i­nal­ly, the idea was to fea­ture an elec­tric trol­ley line in lieu of build­ing a fixed guide­way.

How­ev­er, after con­tem­plat­ing the costs of build­ing street­car tracks, the STA decid­ed in the 2010s to pur­sue build­ing a bus rapid tran­sit line instead, and even­tu­al­ly made it to the con­struc­tion phase.

Despite some eco­nom­ic set­backs and delays, includ­ing the fail­ure of a bal­lot mea­sure in 2015 that would have grant­ed STA more fund­ing and sup­ply chain short­ages dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the project has moved along. Ear­li­er this year, STA invit­ed the pub­lic to par­tic­i­pate in a sim­u­lat­ed tri­al run to gath­er feed­back. And final­ly, on July 15th, the City Line made its inau­gur­al run!

Spokane cel­e­brat­ed the launch with a mul­ti-stop cel­e­bra­tion fea­tur­ing food, per­for­mances from local bands, games, and, of course, plen­ty of pur­ple City Line-themed sou­venirs and treats. (The author’s favorite were some sug­ar cook­ies from Three Birdies Bak­ery, beau­ti­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed with images of one of the City Line bus­es.) Rid­ers could par­tic­i­pate in a punch-card game in which they could col­lect a com­memo­ar­a­tive stamp from each tran­sit stop host­ing a cel­e­bra­tion; the first one hun­dred rid­ers to present all five punch­es received a prize.

For those with­out a car, City Line is a real­ly big deal.

The lack of a vehi­cle can be an extra­or­di­nary bar­ri­er to par­tic­i­pat­ing in social and eco­nom­ic life. For those who are dis­abled, sin­gle with chil­dren, elder­ly, low-income, or have legal restric­tions that pre­vent them from obtain­ing a driver’s license, those bar­ri­ers can com­pound. Inad­e­quate pub­lic tran­sit can turn the sim­plest of errands into whole-day affairs… to say noth­ing of the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age America’s over­re­liance on auto­mo­biles has caused.

Port­land, Van­cou­ver B.C., and Seat­tle have all made sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments in rail tran­sit to improve mobil­i­ty in recent years. Port­land’s MAX sys­tem now con­sists of near­ly six­ty miles of track, and Seat­tle’s 1 Line will soon be extend­ed north and south, with a 2 Line also open­ing up to con­nect the Emer­ald City to its east­ern sub­urbs. Spokane has been slow to fol­low suit. But this new City Line sig­ni­fies the Lilac City is ready to join the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. City Line will make work­ing, liv­ing, and going to school eas­i­er for tens of thou­sands of Spokane res­i­dents and vis­i­tors – and leav­ing a small­er envi­ron­men­tal foot­print while they’re at it!

For a lim­it­ed time, rid­ers can enjoy rid­ing on the City Line at no cost through the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber. That’s right, no fares required, just hop on board!

Hope­ful­ly, this will only be the begin­ning of Spokane’s invest­ment in high capac­i­ty tran­sit for sall Con­grat­u­la­tions to STA, their employ­ees, grant fun­ders, and all the con­struc­tion crews who helped make this possible!