After a reshuffle of committee assignments, Spokane Councilmember Michael Cathcart got something he’d long been pushing for: District 1 representation on the bodies that make transit decisions.
While Councilmember Jonathan Bingle joins the Regional Transportation Commission, Cathcart now sits on the Spokane Transit Agency’s board.
He sat down with SPR’s Owen Henderson for a conversation after his first STA board meeting of 2025.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OWEN HENDERSON: With me now is Spokane City Council Member Michael Cathcart, who represents District 1. Councilmember, thanks for joining me.
COUNCILMEMBER MICHAEL CATHCART: Absolutely, thanks for having me.
OH: You are a recent addition to the STA board. What are some of the experiences and perspectives that you feel like you're bringing to the table in this new position?
MC: Well, I mean, I think it's really important, and both myself and Councilmember Bingle have talked about this quite a bit, from the dais at City Council, that it's important for us to be there and to have this voice because we represent — well, frankly — a few different things. One, the highest ridership. We represent — I think, in the city anyway — the areas with the least access or most challenged access to STA.
And also, we have, in District 1, obviously, a lot of economic challenges, a lot of folks who are working class, working their butts off, trying to improve their lives and their families.
And transit is a necessary tool for them to get to work, get to school, get to wherever it is they're playing. I mean, there's just really important reasons why we need to have transit.
OH: You've talked a lot about making sure there's equitable representation and access across initiatives at City Council, across all districts. How do you want to apply that philosophy in your time at STA?
MC: When I first started on Council in 2020, it was February-ish, I believe, we were invited out to meet with the head individual of the El Estero apartment complex, which is a very low income.
In fact, most of those folks come from homelessness into those apartments. Many are disabled. Many are just really, really challenged. And they were sharing concerns that they did not have adequate bus service.
Now you go out there and you look and you measure, and yeah, they are one mile to the nearest bus stop. And so that's a huge problem, in my opinion, that you've got this huge population of low income — hardworking, but low income — individuals with disabilities, with other challenges.
And you look outside in winter weather, how are they traversing a mile over ice, snow, and all kinds of other things to get to that bus service?
And there are challenges with narrow streets and things like that. Can you use smaller bus profiles? Can you use alternatives?
There's a lot of conversation right now around using some sort of a van-like system as sort of a stopgap measure so that folks that are in those situations where they're a distance from the bus stop essentially could have either a scheduled or a on-call van that would come and essentially take them from where they're at to the bus stop.
So this wouldn't be like an Uber taking you to the final destination, but the idea being that it would get you to that bus stop in a much more effective and efficient way. And so that's an idea that I'm interested in, and that's something that I know the STA has been looking at for about five years.
COVID was sort of the issue that got in the way. We were starting to have conversations with STA on how we could rectify the situation at El Estero. And then COVID hit, and the whole thing just went upside down, and it's just been a challenge. So, happy to get back to that.
And another that really came to my radar last year, or excuse me, two years ago, as I was running for my reelection. And as I did that in sort of the NEPDA area, which folks may not know — the NEPDA is the Northeast Public Development Authority, which is an area where we're trying to increase growth and attract business and do a lot of investment.
And it's downtown Hilliard, but it also goes east of Market to that whole area that's often referred to as Dogtown or The Yard. And so as I was doorbelling through there and talking to folks, I mean, there were some real frustrations because they are inside the PTBA, which is the transit boundary where they pay taxes and things like that, and yet they don't have service.
And so to me, that's a real problem, right? If you're gonna have this boundary in an area that you're not gonna provide service, you either need to figure out how to provide that service or you need to change the boundary.
And so I think that those are some things that we really need to look at. We desperately need that service east of Market in that area where we're really starting to see some groundswell of investment and interest. And the PDA is really starting to do some real positive stuff, which we could have a whole other conversation on.
I think it's important that we are taking, we're prioritizing the expansion of service where it's needed. You've got to use data. You've got to be smart about it.
I don't wanna see empty buses and things like that, but we've got to provide that service. And I think that that should be, to me, that should be the emphasis and the priority, especially as we look at some of the reserves that STA has built up and ways those dollars could be used.
You’ve got to be careful you're not using one-time funds for ongoing expenses, but I think that there are opportunities to rather than just look at fares and some capital projects, I would like to also look at how do we expand that service to serve the people who most need it and are not getting it.
OH: STA is in the process of searching for a new leader. Hypothetically, if it were solely up to you, what are some of the things that you would look for in choosing a new CEO for STA?
MC: I think first and foremost, you need a smart, business-savvy person who understands how to stretch the limited resources or sometimes limited resources, who knows how to engage with the community and really know what the needs are out there.
I think that's the biggest thing you need is somebody with some common sense, somebody who can get along with the labor partners, somebody who can get along with the electeds that serve on the board, and then somebody who understands the needs, wants, and desires of the community and is working hard to fulfill those in conjunction with the board, obviously.
I won't necessarily be on the actual search committee, but of course, I will have a vote at the end. And I'm going to be looking for somebody who I think is gonna do the best job to expand service, to expand opportunities.
And frankly, I think that there are ways that I have long believed that we could reduce either the taxpayer requirements or some of the fare box requirements. And that is with a better use of promotional type advertising, right?
So you could have Avista day and maybe the buses are reduced fares, you've got Avista logos, and I'm just using Avista as an example of a company that could do this. But these are, I think, options to really get what sometimes is referred to as non-dues revenue, right?
And stuff that wouldn't otherwise come in and ways to offset some of these costs, whether it be to the rider or the taxpayers.
OH: We talked before about geographic equity, and I'm curious if there are other District 1-specific needs that would not be STA projects, but might be city projects that you're interested in working on as you continue on your term at council.
MC: There's all kinds of issues that people bring up. The challenge really comes down to process and trying to really meet constituent expectations on some of this, because you kind of have to go through these filters of, you've got a consultant group that looks, you know, makes a first pass.
We've got our internal engineers and kind of transportation experts that take a pass and they're looking at all this stuff. Plus you got to marry it up with grants or actual traffic calming dollars if you got them, which are very limited right now, in large part because of state law changes that really affects our ability to raise those dollars.
So I think adaptive design is a really interesting and unique idea, one that in my mind is probably a little more geared towards piloting ideas that may eventually become permanent.
Although some may just remain as adaptive because they can, and maybe the context of the area allows for that. But I think in a lot of ways, those are going to be more of a pilot to see how could something become permanent, which I think is great.
I think that's exactly what I and many others have called for in other cases [like] the Monroe Street Corridor, which worked out fairly well in the end, but there were a lot of concerns as that was going on.
And I think one of the ideas that many expressed was, ‘Could you just stripe it, see how it works before you go and you change it?’ And I just think that's a basic principle we need to do more of, right? Before you completely take out the infrastructure, just do some things to mitigate, to modify, see how it works.
And then as you move down the road, you can make that a permanent change — if it is indeed working and the data bears out. I think you have to go out every time you do these, which I don't know that we actually do, but we need to go out and actually measure speed and measure just all those different impacts so that we have good data to rely on to know what's happening.
So I'm really hopeful that SPD and others will start to do a really good job of capturing that into the future so we can utilize that.
But we're looking at high volume intersections where there's a lot of traffic accidents that occur. What are some things we can do? Do we add cameras? Do we just make changes to that intersection? There's all kinds of traffic calming needs in Northeast.
I think we may have the most unpaved roads in the entire city and that's a problem. We are an urban city. We should not have unpaved roads.
And so there's a lot of need and unfortunately a very, very minimal amount of resources to address those needs.
