September 12, 2011 in News

Getting There: Major STA route changes take effect Sunday

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The largest reconfiguration of Spokane Transit Authority routes in more than a decade starts Sunday, with virtually every route seeing changes.

Riders are grabbing up schedules to become familiar with new routes and times. “We are really encouraging people to get informed,” said Molly Myers, communications manager for STA.

The revamping is part of a series of budget measures taken in recent years.

Transit officials said they analyzed the entire system, spoke at length with bus riders, and put together a plan that improves service on major routes while maintaining skeletal service to less-traveled locations.

Six routes are being discontinued. They are the No. 30 Francis, No. 31 Garland, No. 41 Latah, No. 46 Altamont, No. 67 Medical Lake/Geiger and No. 95 Millwood.

In many cases, nearby routes are being changed to fill holes created by the eliminations.

In an earlier step, some stops were dropped on some routes to speed up buses.

The changes are being driven by a 7 percent budget reduction for fixed-route service, the result of several years of lower sales tax collections.

The goal in the current round of cuts was to eliminate 18 driver positions, which was accomplished through early retirement incentives and voluntary departures.

Fares increased in two steps starting in 2009. A one-way full-fare ticket is now $1.50, up from $1.

Each route has a new schedule, available at the Plaza downtown, the Bus Shop at 1229 W. Boone Ave., and online at spokanetransit.com.

It is the most extensive revamping since 1998.

When the conversion starts on Sunday, STA is posting extra staff members wearing orange hats at the Plaza and the Valley Transit Center to help riders.

System route maps sport color coding to distinguish high-frequency routes – with service intervals as rapid as every 15 minutes – from basic routes with 30-minute or longer bus intervals.

The changes will put STA in a position to build a high-performance network on major routes in future years to serve larger numbers of commuters.

Among major changes, the No. 1 Plaza/Arena Shuttle is combining runs with the No. 2 South Side Medical Shuttle, which allows for 15-minute frequency on the No. 1 segment.

The No. 26 bus is being reconfigured to serve Lidgerwood Avenue as well as the Riverpoint campus along Spokane Falls Boulevard.

Also, the No. 28 Nevada bus will begin running along Spokane Falls Boulevard, giving the campus area 15-minute bus frequency.

The No. 45 Regal bus will gain 15-minute frequency during peak hours.

Service on the lower South Hill was redesigned west of Monroe Street.

Medical Lake and Cheney will see major changes, but STA is preserving service and increasing frequency during peak hours for Eastern Washington University.

The No. 90 Sprague bus will now turn around at the Valley Transit Center at University Road.

Service throughout Spokane Valley and to Liberty Lake is being redesigned extensively. In the changes, the No. 174 Liberty Lake Express will now stop at the Mirabeau park and ride lot, adding at least four minutes to the trip.

I-90 contractor

The next stage of work to widen Interstate 90 east of Snoqualmie Pass will have a new contractor.

Guy F. Atkinson, LLC, of Renton, has been chosen for a $236 million contract for six travel lanes, accompanying bridges and culverts, rock slope work and a new snow shed. The work stretches from milepost 58 at the existing snow shed to milepost 60 at Keechelus Dam.

Max J. Kuney Co., of Spokane, began work in 2010 on the section from milepost 55 to 58.

Commission appointment

Joe Tortorelli, of Spokane, has been appointed to the Washington State Transportation Commission by Gov. Chris Gregoire. He replaces Latisha Hill, also of Spokane.

Tortorelli has worked for Economic Development Northwest, a consulting business, and is secretary/executive director of the Spokane Area Good Roads Association.

Projects near completion

Reconstruction of Second Avenue from Division to Howard streets should be substantially finished by this morning, city officials said.

A reconstruction project on Wellesley Avenue from Ash to Milton streets should be finished by Friday.

Motorists on North Division Street have been encountering a few delays as workers finish up repaving and concrete work there.

Westbound Riverside Avenue will be closed near Jefferson Street for two weeks starting today so crews can install a new roof on Riverfalls Tower apartments.

10 comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  PassinThru on September 12 at 9:57 a.m.

  Meanwhile, how are the plans shaping up for the Thirty Six Million Dollar Electric Bus? It is certainly is a related story.

• 

  de3 on September 12 at 11:26 a.m.

  I think they cut back in about 1998/1999, then again in about 2001, then they grew for a bit, and now they are back to cutting about 1/5th of the service over several years.

  Reminds of when the bank posted a sign saying “We are changing our hours to serve you better!”, when they we were ending Saturday service and cutting their weekday hours!

• 

  Teseract on September 12 at 12:21 p.m.

  I say the STA should pay for itself or not exist at all. A huge chunk of the local sales tax that’s above the state baseline rate goes into the STA’s coffers. Every time you buy anything other than groceries in Spokane County you’re paying for someone else’s bus ride.

  The sad thing is that few public transit systems are able to survive without government subsidy. It’s just not efficient enough on a per-rider basis to survive. $1.50 a ride is affordable, $8 to go across town would not be.

  As a result the STA is mostly a mass transit system for the poor and the mentally ill except for a few express buses for people who work downtown. All the crazy people in the county can get a free bus pass, which is why the STA Plaza is a hotspot for the mentally ill in Spokane.

  I rode the bus for 3 years in college and I’ve never seen so many crazy, smelly and generally downtrodden and decrepit people in all my life. A 30 minute trip in a car took over an hour and a half on the bus, including a 20 minute layover in the mental ward, er, I mean, the “Plaza”.

  When I got a car finally I suddenly had two more hours a day to enjoy life, rather than spending two hours worrying if I’d catch the horrible disease from the person hacking up a lung in the seat behind me. I also saved a fortune in doctor’s visits and cold and flu remedies!

• 

  katula on September 12 at 3:17 p.m.

  Yup, because I’m sure people with mental illness (or who don’t want to, need to, or can afford to have a car) really enjoy the free bus pass. It must really make up for all the stigma and prejudiced treatment that they receive at the hands of “normal” people, including you, Teseract. You could have easily said what you wanted to say without slamming an entire population of people who don’t choose to have mental illnesses.

• 

  ChefGus/ John Olsen on September 12 at 3:21 p.m.

  No transit system anywhere in the World…. that I’ve traveled “Pays for itself” …. it is a Social service..not unlike the medical care that the poorest child on the street of Istanbul Turkey has.. With dental care.. this nation is so far behind the curve with regards “caring” and looking after the three basic needs of people world wide… Safety Shelter and Food… we should All hang our heads with deep shame.. having “missed the call” of Christ… and St Francis… Transportation at a low cost is necessary for the community that I serve… and live and love… without that their lives are ever so very much more complex and sad…. Empathy.. Empathy… not criticism is what is needed here…cause each and every one of us is but a few or even one paycheck away from food stamps and congregate feeding programs….. Read the Gospel’s don’t harp on the Old Testament… St Paul was Saul… he got it… and found “The Way” …. where oh where are YOU>>> John

• 

  PlanB on September 12 at 3:56 p.m.

  Less service and higher cost. Hard to find a better improvement than that. I bet they could save even more by eliminating all bus service, then the system would be perfect. We would still need an executive committee and the plaza of course.

  I have no problem with the crazy, smelly, mentally ill poor people that use public transit. Maybe that makes me one of them.

• 

  Teseract on September 12 at 9:58 p.m.

  @katula: I’m not slamming them. I’m stating facts.

  Many of the people who ride the STA bus that are mentally ill should never have been released from mental institutions in the first place. But, in the name of “mainstreaming” (which was really just another word for “let’s save the state money”) we dumped them on the streets and left many of them homeless, unmedicated and unmonitored.

  For the record, my mother is mentally ill. She is one of the ones who should be in an institution. Instead the state pays to keep her in an apartment and pays all her bills since it’s cheaper than an institution. As a consequence every few months she has a breakdown and does something like heat up a pot of vegetable oil on the stove and pour it down her legs. When I was a child I remember waking up to the lights of emergency vehicles flashing across the ceiling. My mother had taken my father’s .22 rifle and shot herself in her own foot.

  Once she used a razor blade to slice open her stomach. She tried to stop the bleeding with toilet paper. The surgeons spent a couple of hours digging around in her innards picking pieces of toilet paper out from among her small intestines.

  As a young teen I woke up once on summer vacation (sleeping in), to the sound of police banging on my bedroom door. I opened the door and found no one, then peeked my head out to find two officers with their guns drawn with their backs pressed against the wall on either side of the door. They searched my room, looking for my mother. They’d busted in a door, searching for my mother who had been reported by her shrink as “thinking about hurting herself”. I got to be questioned in my bathrobe for an hour by the cops because they were convinced I was hiding her. Little did they know I’d gladly have given her up if I knew where she was.

  So, I’m biased. I’d have been much better off as a child if the state had taken my mother and locked her up in a mental ward where she could get the attention she craved and the medication she needed. Instead she was “mainstreamed” and managed to mangle the childhood of her three sons and her husband.

• 

  Jack on September 13 at 7:39 a.m.

  I find it interesting that I can drive from the valley to Cheney for work and it takes me 35 minutes for a total of 70 minutes round trip. If I ride the bus with the new schedule then it takes me 3 hours and 30 minutes round trip for a time cost of 140 minutes extra. That is 3 times the time.

  Way to go STA.

• 

  libmark on September 13 at 7:50 a.m.

  Teseract —

  Sorry to hear about the situation with your mother — that is a perfect example of our society trying to save money but without doing a full accounting of the protracted, long-term costs.

  As for your original post and given your insight into the need for our culture to engage in full, truthful accounting, do you really think that the public transportation infrastructure you use and enjoy isn’t subsidized? And subsidized heavily? Being able to hop in a car and zip around town for a buck of gas and ~$60 annual tab fees comes nowhere close to the true cost.

• 

  Teseract on September 13 at 10:11 p.m.

  @libmark - As I recall in my original post, I commented that few public transit systems can exist without a significant and continuing influx of funds from the government, but perhaps I went about it in a round-about way:

  “The sad thing is that few public transit systems are able to survive without government subsidy. It’s just not efficient enough on a per-rider basis to survive. $1.50 a ride is affordable, $8 to go across town would not be.”

  I meant that if public transit was not subsidized, the cost per trip would be much higher and no one would use it as a car would be cheaper overall for most people.

  Thank you for your comments about my mother, though.