Spokane Transit closes smoking area for 90 days in pilot project

The chain-link fence went up last week, wrapping around the smoking area at Spokane Transit Authority’s downtown Plaza and bearing white signs with blue borders.

The signs explain that the smoking area is closed for 90 days – from Jan. 4 to April 4 – as part of a pilot project to test whether a closure would improve the public’s experiences waiting for buses.

Smoking within 25 feet of public places or places of employment is against the law in Washington. That includes 25 feet from entrances, exits, open windows and ventilation intakes.

The change is coming for three reasons: accessibility for paratransit customers, crime prevention and secondhand smoke inhalation concerns, said STA spokeswoman Carly Cortright.

It is possible that the closure of the smoking section at the Plaza becomes permanent after the pilot. Cortright said creating a new smoking area doesn’t make sense anywhere else near the Plaza.

The move is the second time STA has removed the Plaza smoking area. The agency eliminated it in August 2012, but the decision was reversed after a little over a year. Downtown businesses complained that eliminating the smoking area caused smokers to loiter and smoke in front of their businesses. In response, the Spokane City Council gave police the power to enforce $50 smoking violation tickets, and eventually STA reversed course and spent $70,000 to restore the smoking area.

Lavina Houchen uses the transit every day and smokes, but not in the smoking section.

“I stopped using it when it was still open because I was always having people bum cigarettes. I try not to stay in that area any longer,” Houchen said. “So, to me, it’s not a huge deal, but I would like to know why they’re doing it.”

Houchen said she wouldn’t be surprised if deterring homeless people is a motivator for the Plaza to eliminate its smoking section.

Rob Campbell, who also uses the transit system every day, agrees with Houchen and said the area attracts drug users. According to Campbell, eliminating the smoking area could clean up the Plaza.

The Spokane Police Department conducted a Crime Prevention through Environmental Design analysis and determined that the Plaza’s smoking section increases the likelihood of “security incidents” because its design reduces visibility – in other words, the smoking section is used for more than just smoking.

“By removing the section, the Plaza reduces some of those visibility concerns,” Cortright said.

The smoking section can make it difficult for paratransit customers to navigate the Plaza, Cortright added.

“It’s quite a distance away for people with limited mobility to have to walk and get around there,” Cortright said. “And we’ve got curb space where the smoking section is that is much easier for them to access and that is ideally where we would like them to be able to navigate.”

In 2025, STA provided 969 paratransit trips to or from the Plaza, Cortright said. In 2024, the entire transit system provided 2.2 million trips from the Plaza.

There are also concerns about inhalation of secondhand smoke, Cortright said.

“We know people are going to smoke; there’s not a lot we can do to control that, but when you have a whole congregation of people smoking and they create secondhand smoke for everyone else …,” Cortright said. “Our hope is that we can eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke by not having that congregation.”

Smoking while walking, Cortright said, is more desirable than having smokers congregate in one place “creating a cloud of secondhand smoke.”

Transit users can take a survey using a QR code that’s hanging on several walls inside the Plaza to tell STA officials how they feel about the closure of the smoking section.

Tracy Carr, a Cheney resident, uses the transit system a few times a week. He stopped smoking in 2004 and said he’s opposed to the Plaza getting rid of the smoking section. He said it’s not reasonable to not have a place for people to smoke.

“Not that I want to promote smoking, I think it’s a bad idea. But, they’ve got to smoke somewhere, and if they don’t have a place, they’re just gonna start flicking cigarette butts on the ground everywhere,” Carr said.