While the Spokane Transit Authority searches for its new chief executive, SPR News is bringing you conversations focused on transit and transportation.
We've heard from one of STA’s interim CEOs, and now, we have a perspective from someone who has a pitch about what Spokane’s mass transit could look like in the not-so-distant future: Bringing back the city's street cars.
Erik Lowe, the founder of Spokane Reimagined and transit activist, joined SPR's Owen Henderson to chat about what the future could hold for the city's transit riders and what he’d like to see in STA’s leadership.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OWEN HENDERSON: If it were up to you, what would you look for in a new leader for Spokane Transit?
ERIK LOWE: There's a lot of things that I would look for in a leader. I think somebody who actually rides transit is certainly beneficial. You need to understand the system that you're running, and the only way you can really understand that system is by riding the bus.
Spokane Reimagined has been making a large push for rail, and we're shifting our efforts moving forward, but we still would like to see a transit CEO who has experience with rail, who's worked at an agency that operates rail.
And then somebody who's committed to improving transportation equity, improving the inclusion of underrepresented groups when it comes to decision-making — somebody who has a vision for Spokane Transit and wants to implement that vision. It's not just a matter of doing whatever the board says. I feel like that's a very big discrepancy between what Spokane Reimagined wants and what the board wants.
The next transit CEO very likely could have the largest overall impact on our region for the next 20 years. That person needs to be somebody who has a vision for Spokane and what it can be and what Spokane Transit can be. It's just important that the public has insight into the process and that we get to participate.
OH: You mentioned you guys at Spokane Reimagined are starting to shift some of your focus towards rail, and I know that you've got some other initiatives including streetcars on the docket. What's going on?
EL: So we've been pushing for the last year or so at STA board meetings to have them start planning for rail, and they haven't. So we are shifting our focus and we're looking at — we are in the process of developing a plan to bring a streetcar system to the city of Spokane, and the goal with this is that it would be a city-owned and operated streetcar system that would run 24 hours a day.
STA routes don't run 24 hours a day. If you're lucky, you might have an 11 o'clock run, but otherwise a lot of services, and pretty early in the evening. We anticipate going to voters next year to present our plan.
Right now, it's a three-phase plan. We'd like to go from downtown to the Garland District in phase one; from the Maple Ash Corridor along Garland to Market for phase two, so that would be from Garland to Hilliard essentially; and then for phase three, we would like to extend the streetcars to the hospitals both at the north side, Holy Family, and then at Deaconess and Sacred Heart all the way up to Manitou Park.
We have settled on a funding process that we would like to go to voters with, and now it's just a matter of putting together the marketing materials and education materials. We don't want to go to voters with something that's half-baked. We really want to show them what we can accomplish with the funds that they would hopefully set aside for a streetcar system.
OH: And would the streetcar system follow some of the parts of Spokane's original streetcar system?
EL: So Garland is one of — it's probably the most prominent streetcar suburb in Spokane, but Hilliard was also a streetcar suburb. It was its own city at one point, and Perry is another streetcar suburb. These are some of Spokane's most prized neighborhoods, and it's because they're dense, they've got mixed uses, people can go to the grocery store, people can go to restaurants, and it's all within walking distance. And we want the entire city to be able to take advantage of that.
It's difficult to undo over 100 years of auto-centric planning, but we're going to be able to make a pretty strong case for the economic vitality and the social fabric that will come with building a streetcar network.
The streetcar networks that were originally constructed back in the 1800s through the 1920s were privately run. They weren't public operations; they were private operations, and they were largely for real estate speculation.
The destruction of Spokane's streetcars was a tragedy. It was the result of a concerted effort by auto manufacturers, by policy makers, by developers. Once those private operations started to falter, it created a doom loop of disinvestment, and buses were seen as a cheaper alternative. And they are initially.
A bus is cheaper than a train, no doubt about that, but long-term operating costs, long-term maintenance costs, long-term, just capital costs in general, they always go in the direction of rail.
Just because it failed in the past doesn't mean that it can't be successful in the future, and it's important for people to realize that the failures of the past were a purposeful failure. It wasn't just we couldn't figure it out, it was we wanted the streetcars to go away as a city.
When cars were first getting rolled out, they were much cheaper, they weren't as big an impact on household finances, but now the average family spends over $1,000 a month per car on car payments, maintenance, fuel, everything else, and that's a huge hit.
If you've got two, three cars, that's a lot of money coming out of your pocket every month to pay for these maintenance costs, and your car payments, and everything else, and we want to provide transportation options that are cheaper for Spokane families, that are efficient, that move quickly.
People are going to continue moving here. It's gonna continue getting bigger. And we need to plan for that, and we need to plan for that intelligently. We can't just continue to sprawl outward as we've done for the last 100 years.
And so as Spokane densifies, permanent transit infrastructure becomes much more viable, and — more importantly — it becomes necessary. It allows us to densify very intelligently, and it allows us to provide services.
Our goal when it comes to this network is to try to serve underserved areas as much as we can, and our hope is that if we are successful with this first measure, that 10, 20 years from now, Spokane is going to come back and say, ‘We want to do another expansion of our streetcar network.’ So that's what we're looking for.
OH: Eric Lowe, thank you so much for your time.
EL: Thank you.