Oregon Public Broadcasting

Climb aboard a CityLink bus in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and you notice something missing: a fare box. You can get on and ride all day without dropping a dime.

Free public transit is rare these days. A growing number of North Idaho residents tired of paying four bucks a gallon for gas are taking advantage of it. Coeur d’Alene correspondent Doug Nadvornick reports.

It’s a warm, weekday morning and this CityLink bus is packed. Most are older folks headed to the Coeur d’Alene Casino for a day of air-conditioned entertainment. But there are working folks here too.

Keith Allen Dixon squeezes into the back seat. Dixon works in the casino’s kitchen. He doesn’t own a car so he’s relieved that the bus takes him right to the front door.

Keith Allen Dixon: “Makes me get to work on time so I don’t have to miss it. Rides what? Every hour it runs? So it works out.”

Sitting next to Dixon is fellow casino employee Jake Schreiber. They look like twins in their white T-shirts and black pants. Schreiber rides about five days a week.

Jake Schreiber: “I have a car actually. I just bought a new car, but I really don’t like spending that much money on gas, especially when this is free.”

Every day people like Schreiber and Dixon are discovering CityLink. In July, a record 38,000 people took the bus, more than twice the number of passengers that rode a year ago.

The free bus service started as an unusual deal between the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and Kootenai County.

Alan Eirls: “It actually is the first of its kind where a tribal government and a county government have been able to set up an agreement between the two of them that has worked and become successful.”

Alan Eirls is the transportation director for CityLink.

The tribe started the service in 2004 to help tribal members in rural areas who didn’t have cars.

The next year, Kootenai County’s population passed 50,000 and the federal government required the county to develop a mass transit system. The county approached the tribe about combining resources.

The county, cities and state have chipped in money to supplement a large federal transportation grant and a sizeable contribution from the tribe.

For now, says John Austin, the county’s public transit administrator, says riders haven’t been asked to chip in.

John Austin: “It was important for the tribe and the Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization to have a free system, to build it up and to grow it. And it’s been very successful because of that.”

Whether bus service will stay free is an open question.

In light of high gas prices, some systems, like Seattle’s, are proposing fare increases. Another Northwest transit system, on Washington’s Whidbey Island, offers free service; it’s funded by a six-tenths-of-a-cent sales tax.

John Austin: “In Idaho we’re not allowed any help from a local option tax or anything like they can in Washington, so it makes it very difficult to fund unless the cities come up with the money.”

That’s what Austin and other CityLink supporters are hoping for, more money from participating cities. They’ll need it.

This year, Eirls says he’s had to dip into CityLink’s reserves to cover expenses. He says there’s also the question of future federal funding. 

Alan Eirls: “The size of the fund, although it may get a little larger each year, there’s also more people entering the arena saying, ‘We need to provide transportation for this sector.’ They all come out of the same cookie jar.”

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe and Kootenai County will sit down next April to re-examine the system, including whether bus service should remain free.

John Austin thinks it will stay free in 2009. But who knows in 2010 and beyond?

Would bus riders mind paying 50-cents or a dollar to keep using the bus?

Steve Bell pondered that question as he stood in the shade next to his guitar case, waiting for his next bus.

Steve Bell: “Heavens yes. You know, I just went to see my son in Glacier Park. I spent $130 to see him. So if they were to charge, a dollar? Drop in the bucket.”

Online:

CityLink Bus System