Bickering, Budget Constraints Sidetrack Yakima’s Trolley Bus System

Here’s a tip for whomever is in charge of getting rubber-tired trolley-replica buses for downtown Spokane’s new Wall Street pedestrian mall route.

I think I know where you can pick up some at bargain prices.

Yakima is going out of the trolley business, and it looks like they’ll be putting their fleet up for sale.

They have four used models three-and-ahalf years old.

“They’re red and green, with a cowcatcher on the front and a big brass bell on top,” says Yakima city transit manager Bill Schultz.

“People thought they were very cute,” says Schultz. “They added a special ambience downtown. And they were popular while they lasted.

“But they ran into a political backlash.”

Could Yakima’s loss be Spokane’s gain?

Well, maybe. If Spokane Transit Authority officials and the property owners flanking the mall who are putting up big bucks to buy the trolleys care to take advantage of the opportunity.

And if not, maybe they’d at least like to take a cue from a neighboring community’s experience with trolley buses.

Yakima’s trolley system, seen as a savior of downtown, fell victim to community squabbling and political back stabbing.

Sound familiar?

Here’s the story in brief:

As in Spokane, the idea of bright and colorful little trolleys to whisk people about in the central business district was predicated on “helping out downtown,” says Schultz.

Why bother?

Because, says Schultz, “Downtown is the soul of a community.

“If a community doesn’t have a viable downtown, it doesn’t have a soul. Being a former city planner, I buy that.

“But not everybody does,” he admitted.

“There are others in shopping centers and elsewhere around town who don’t directly benefit,” Schultz observes, “and they ask, ‘Why downtown? Why not me? What do I get out of it?’

“The answer, in my experience,” says the city transit manager, “is - you get a viable community. Because, like it or not, downtowns do need support. Central business districts have problems other business centers don’t have - parking, fragmented ownership, etc.

“So we do things to make downtowns more livable.

“Your skybridges in Spokane are a perfect example of that,” says Schultz.

“Anyway, improving downtown was a large part of the reason Yakima started its trolley system.”

Further exacerbating the we-vs.-them issue, neighborhood activists joined the hue and cry raised by outlying business interests against rich downtown merchants and property owners feathering their nest at the expense of the rest of the community.

“That’s part of what happened here,” says Schultz. “Then, too,” he explains, “Yakima is a very conservative town. And the trolleys became a lightning-rod political issue in the business community.

“Yakima doesn’t like expansion of government. So, with the shift in partisan politics, trolleys became something of a football.

“Makeup of the City Council, which earlier favored trolley service, changed,” says Schultz. “Support eroded.”

Politics aside, what the issue finally came down to was balancing the city budget. “Essentially, the decision to drop trolley service,” says Schultz, “was based on this (rationale): Trolleys are not a basic service. They are downtown people movers. This is not an essential.”

The Yakima Downtown Trolley service, initiated June 1991, terminated year-end 1994.

The City Council wants to research possible use of the trolley buses by another agency. But Schultz expects the vehicles to end up being sold by sealed bid.

They cost $109,000 each in 1991. “I have no idea what the market is for them today,” says Schultz.

In Spokane, it looks like trolley service will begin early this year.

But progress on the downtown Wall Street pedestrian and trolley mall has been impeded by fits and starts and stalls, and there’s no telling what’s next.

First, the project was held up by public debate over whether the route should traverse Riverfront Park.

Then redevelopment of Wall Street to accommodate the trolleys and create a pedestrian mall ran into rocks and other roadblocks and fell way behind.

Meanwhile, the Spokane Transit Authority, which will operate the trolleys between the North Bank of the River and transit’s new bus depot in the heart of the core, has been plagued by project mistakes and cost overruns.

And now delivery of the replica-trolley buses, at $127,000 a copy, is behind schedule.

But latest word is service will start in midFebruary.

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