Ted McDermott

Mike Gribner, administrator of WSDOT’s Eastern Region, presented Spokane City Council President Breean Beggs with a letter on Feb. 13 asking the council to “adopt a development moratorium for the U.S. 195 traffic shed area” until it deals with the “crisis in management of safety within the corridor.”

New plans for an on-ramp to the North Spokane Corridor off Hamilton Street have freed up some of the real estate in the East Central neighborhood that was going to be used for traffic lanes. WSDOT is asking residents of the neighborhood what they’d like to see on the leftover land, but there may not be enough for major housing projects, officials say.

The idea that started Vern Ziegler down the path to what is now a regional chain of six home-improvement stores in the Spokane area came in the 1960s, when the Rogers High School graduate was working as a homebuilder with a close friend.

Plans for how to handle increased development southwest of Spokane were discussed in the early 1990s, but funding was never found for those projects. That’s led to motorists finding themselves in long backups during rush hour as more and more home owners in the area try to commute on a road system that was built when the area was largely rural.

A Spokane Transit Authority proposal would put double-decker buses on the busy route between Spokane and the home of Eastern Washington University. While that’s perhaps the most fun fact about STA’s potential changes to routes and schedule over the next few years, it’s likely not the most important one for the thousands who ride the bus.

The city of Spokane hopes to make up a gap in the popular paved trail that starts in Riverside State Park by replacing sidewalks in the West Central neighborhood, using federal money. But some neighbors are worried that the plan would increase safety concerns and believe there’s a better option for the trail’s route on the south side of the Spokane River.

The oversize check displayed on the stage said it all: $53,425,000 made out to the Spokane Transit Authority from the U.S. Department of Transportation. STA has known the huge sum was coming to fully fund a long-awaited bus rapid transit line through downtown since April, when the federal government allocated the money for the project. But on Tuesday, the award became official and STA got direct access to the funds.

Ask Megan Sausser what will be different about Kootenai County in the next seven years, and she will give you a straight answer: “There will be a lot more cars. ... If we don’t make changes to capacity, it’ll essentially be a parking lot.”

The search for de-icers that don’t involve salt – and, by extension, don’t corrode cars or contaminate bodies of water – have led some states and researchers to experiment with a range of novel substances. But the crews in and around Spokane are sticking, almost entirely, to a more traditional substance: salt.

A 2-for-1 approach to snow plowing may look easy, but operators like Kent Reitmeier have to deal with a lot of potential issues at once. Including impatient drivers trying to sneak past his rig.

“But the great thing about books is that they get spread by word of mouth,” Walter said. Word about “We Live in Water” might have been spread initially by Twitter instead of by mouth on Saturday, but it still proved Walter’s maxim right, as Obama’s 111 million followers found out about his high esteem for the six-year-old collection of mostly Spokane-based fiction.

The 64-year-old activist seeks justice and community engagement at Superfund meetings, tribal gatherings and even from her chemotherapy chair.

An Idaho veteran died and his wife was seriously injured in a car crash that occurred while they were driving to a Veterans Day dinner in Sandpoint, according to a GoFundMe page set up to raise money for their children and other family.

Responsible Growth*Northeast Washington, the group that filed the appeal, responded by vowing to fight on, while PacWest Silicon, the company behind the smelter project, promised patience to see the project through.

The high divers of the Sinbad the Pirate High Dive Show, which is at the fair this week, have a healthy dose of respect for the dangerousness that underlies their equal parts showing-off and goofing-off routine.

The Spokesman-Review and the Northwest Passages Book Club will host, for the second year in a row, a series of readings, conversations, tutorials and demonstrations with everyone from country music legend Trace Adkins to Spokane Mayor David Condon at the Interstate Fair.

Some 5,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses gathered at the Spokane Arena Saturday afternoon as a part of a three-day regional convention.

I’m no food critic, because here’s as deeply as I have ever thought about food: did it taste good while I ate it and was I full when I was done? The answers at Pig Out were yes and definitely yes.

The Spokesman-Review is offering samples of “Nancy” and four other potential new comic strips in the pages of the Serendipity section.

On the eve of Smokey Bear’s 75th birthday, Ray Kresek says the origins of what he calls the world’s largest Smokey Bear collection – which exists in a crowded but neatly arranged room in the basement of his home on the far North Side of Spokane – can be traced back to 1950.