The Spokane Transit Authority has recently been working with representatives of Eastern to establish a more direct bus route from the Cheney campus to Riverpoint.

According to Eastern’s website, the Riverpoint campus is located in downtown Spokane, a few minutes from I-90 and the bus plaza. The Phase I Classroom Building at Riverpoint is where EWU’s College of Business and Public Administration is housed.

LeeAnn Case, associate vice president for Business and Auxiliary Services at EWU in Cheney, said the issue for students coming from Riverpoint is changing buses at the Plaza at night, when some of the routes stop running for the day.

According to Case, an issue STA faces is a decrease in ridership that occurred this year, offering possible reasons such as favorable weather conditions and lower gas prices. Case said the current route to the Riverpoint campus from Cheney involves taking a bus to the downtown bus Plaza in Spokane, then riding the bus on Route 29.

According to the STA’s website, a trip from the Cheney campus to the Riverpoint campus would take approximately 35 minutes including around a 10-minute wait for buses.

Case said Madison Azim, an ASEWU student services representative, has been a large contributor to the project for a bus route from the Cheney campus to Riverpoint.

“[Azim] has been instrumental in pushing this issue forward for students and partnering with STA on finding non-cost options to improve the service,” said Case.  “Bus route scheduling is extremely complicated. At EWU, we tend to focus only on the routes that are highly visible for us, but STA has to manage the entire system for Spokane, the West Plains, Liberty Lake, the Valley …”

Case said she and her department remain hopeful that more information about the proposed bus route will be available for release, but for the time being the process is not finalized.