Ready to roll
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald The grand opening crowd gets the first look at the new Grant Transit Authority multimodal transit center Monday.
MOSES LAKE — Grant Transit Authority’s new Multimodal Transit Center opened Monday with a ribbon cutting and the announcement of new and expanded bus service.
Buses started rolling in and out Tuesday. The transit center is located at the intersection of Division and Fifth streets.
Bus service will be expanded to Othello, with a stop in Warden. New Monday through Friday routes have been established to Wenatchee and Ellensburg, and some bus routes will have buses running more frequently.
The new Wenatchee route will make stops in Ephrata and Quincy. The Ellensburg route, depending on the bus, will go from Moses Lake through Quincy and George, or from Moses Lake through Warden, Othello and Royal City. Riders will have their choice.
Bus runs will be added to some routes, so that on those routes buses will be scheduled every 30 minutes, said Michael Wagner, GTA general manager. Weekend routes continue in Moses Lake, to Big Bend Community College, and from Moses Lake to Quincy, Ephrata and Soap Lake and back. There’s a separate weekend route between Moses Lake and Warden.
Transit authority board chair Bruce Reim, who’s also the mayor of Ephrata, cut the ribbon on the new building Monday morning. (Reim said they gave him 45 minutes for his speech, but he cut it down to 5.)
Reim said he has been asked where the tax money goes that Grant County residents pay for mass transit. “Well, you’re standing on it.”
Anybody who has worked on a project involving a lot of different groups knows how hard it is to keep a project on track, Reim said. But on this project all the different groups worked together “so this would go up as seamless as it looks,” he said,
“What you’re looking at is the culmination of a heck of a lot of work,” Reim said. Former GTA director Greg Wright said it was a years-long project – finding a site, obtaining funding, coming up with a design.
The new transit center gives the GTA a chance to promote transit and Grant County, Wright said. “Just think of the possibilities,” said U.S. Congressman Dan Newhouse. Improved transportation increases the options in a community, Newhouse said.
The building has indoor and outdoor seating for passengers, and a place to buy tickets indoors. The arrival and departure lanes cut diagonally across the site.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.