The best-designed airports, train stations and bus stations bustle with excitement. People arrive; people depart. In between, they wait, but even the waiting has a sense of anticipation and eagerness.

Spokane Transit Authority’s downtown Plaza doesn’t bustle; it saunters. A proposed redesign could change that. STA staffers have recommended a preliminary Plaza redesign. It’s a sound plan, with a caveat or two.

 STA’s hub will remain downtown. Good. Despite Spokane’s expansion to the east and west, downtown still serves as the area’s core. Compare it to a hub airport, such as Minneapolis or Chicago. Wherever you live in the country, you can get to those hubs fairly quickly. And wherever you live in Spokane, you can get downtown fairly quickly, change buses and get to your next destination. There was discussion about moving downtown transit operations to the Intermodal Center on the east end of downtown, but the site was deemed unsuitable due to congestion and accessibility concerns.

And as Susan Meyer, STA’s chief executive officer, explained: “Downtown is the centerpiece of our system architecture.”

 The building will be streamlined for efficiency. Another good idea. Plans call for bus operations to take place on the Plaza’s first floor only. The second floor could be leased as office space or for another purpose. Limiting activity to the first floor will help with the bustle factor.

 The cascading fountain and escalators might be removed. This one merits much more discussion. Citizens who believe in the power of public art should get their voices heard at STA’s November meeting. The cascading waterfall, complete with bronze cougars, has become as familiar to residents as the meet-me-under-the-clock timepiece once was in the old Crescent department store.

The STA building opened in July 1995, when gas sold for between $1.10 and $1.20 a gallon. The $20.6 million building was beset by cost overruns and delays. It was designed as an urban indoor park where people of all socioeconomic classes would wait together before bustling off to their buses. The park vision never became reality, because Spokane remained a town where bus riding was the domain of students and low-income residents. And businesses soon began to complain about the loitering, litter and noise in the streets surrounding the Plaza.

High gas prices, coupled with the go-green movement, has helped STA’s ridership – among all ages and income levels – increase for three straight years.

The STA remodel – projected cost: $2.5 million – needs to be done with the building’s bustling phase in mind. The Plaza’s shaky past does not have to be its future. If you use the bus now, or if you plan to commute by bus in the future, let STA know how its building can best reflect your bus-riding reality.