TRANSIT: Consider alternatives

Regarding the “Mass Transit Hub,” Kootenai County citizens should know it is a bus station which is “a done deal” to be built at Riverstone, thanks to newly elected Commissioners Bingham and Fillios. Commission Chairman Eberlein has voted “NO” several times.

I’m not personally against government agencies providing public transportation services to their disabled citizens, or those who don’t have other inexpensive means to get where they must. However, that presupposes the plans and assumptions are realistic and affordable for the present, and also the foreseeable future. Reasonable questions about the assumptions are waived aside by supporters who don’t want to consider objections that might delay or change the project.

My main objection is their plan to build a bus station contiguous to Riverstone. Riverstone has had rough economic times because of the recent weak economy. They don’t need another problem to deal with. When taxpayers paid much of the developer’s costs (through LCDC), it was justified that Riverstone would become an upscale area complementing the revitalized downtown and the envisioned education corridor. So now our new commissioners want to put a bus station there?

Have any of you been to a bus station lately? If you haven’t, it doesn’t matter. They haven’t improved much. They are dirty, they smell bad, especially in corners near locked bathrooms. They attract drunks, loiterers, beggars, the homeless, muggers, and petty criminals who prey on the foregoing.

Riverstone has up-scale restaurants, shops, professional offices, and attractive residences close by. The bus station populace will find it convenient and entertaining to stroll south where the action is. There are additional reasons why we don’t need a bus station in Riverstone, with or without the proposed County Administration Building. It may be convenient to build a bus station on land owned by the county and the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, but it’s not the only place, and it certainly is not the best.

If you think I’m a cold-hearted person not caring for disabled/homeless folks hanging around “fancy” Riverstone, that’s just not true. If we want a better place for them, we should and could do better than a bus station.

BOB BROOKE

Hayden Lake