Oregon Public Broadcasting

Inland Northwest transportation officials are hoping the region will get a big chunk of the federal stimulus package coming down the pike from Washington D.C.

New infrastructure projects would fit nicely into their new long-term economic development strategy.

While other regions are focusing on new things, like alternative energy and electric cars, the Inland Northwest may decide to take a step back to the past. Correspondent Doug Nadvornick reports.

Trains built Spokane. Since the 1880s, the city has been a staging point for railroads. Trains delivered minerals out of north Idaho and shipped them to the rest of the country. And they hauled timber from the surrounding forests and wheat from the Palouse region.

Freight hauling has since taken a back seat to higher tech economic engines like health care. But Glenn Miles from the Spokane Regional Transportation Commission says there’s always the need to move stuff.

Glenn Miles: “When you look at air cargo, what’s coming in from the Pacific Rim. When you look at the number of containers coming through the Port of Tacoma, Port of Seattle, Port of Portland, headed for Chicago and points east, you know it all ends up in the Spokane area.”

Spokane still has an active freight transportation industry. But Miles and other civic leaders think it could be bigger.

So they’re exploring what they call the Inland Pacific Hub. It goes beyond Spokane to include eastern Washington, north Idaho, British Columbia and Alberta.

Miles says hub supporters are looking at how they can maximize the region’s transportation infrastructure. 

Glenn Miles: “How do we position ourselves to use those assets for part of the, you know, global economy?”

Among those assets: several highways that converge on Spokane and Coeur d’Alene. Railroads that run through the area. A 24/7 port-of-entry into Canada up near Bonners Ferry, Idaho.

The biggest asset may be Spokane International Airport.

Business officials like Matt Ewers tout its low landing fees, compared to other Northwest airports. Ewers is a vice president of Inland Empire Distribution Systems, one of Spokane’s biggest transportation companies.

Matt Ewers:  “Bringing in international air cargo, air freighters from Asia makes a lot of economic sense as opposed to bringing them in from Seattle or San Francisco.”

But Ewers is a trucking guy. He’s interested in ground transportation. He wants to speed up construction of Spokane’s North-South Freeway, to get long-haul trucks moving through the city at 60 miles an hour, rather than crawling through traffic.

That could be a candidate for federal stimulus money.

Ewers is also experimenting with ways to shorten the trip out of the region, to the east coast and even Europe. Instead of local companies moving their goods through Vancouver and Seattle, Ewers wants to take advantage of a railroad transfer facility that’s in southeastern British Columbia.

Matt Ewers: “Unload the containers there and drop them and run them down through truck into Spokane and then we would eliminate all that travel going across the state of Washington and going up through Vancouver.”

Ewers says that would cut transportation costs for Inland Northwest companies and make them more competitive. It would also help when mountain passes are closed by snow.

But the hub idea faces challenges. Highway 95, Idaho’s major north-south throughway, bottlenecks for several miles north of Coeur d’Alene. There’s talk of building a bypass around that area, but nothing definite.

And Highway 395 from Spokane to the Canadian border is sometimes dangerous. Some segments have a high number of accidents.

And then there’s this: what do the people of the region think about the hub?

Kim Zentz: “We haven’t engaged the public yet in a meaningful way because we don’t have data on which to base the conversation.”

Kim Zentz is one of the two chairs of the hub committee.

The Inland Pacific Hub study is expected to be completed later this year. And then its supporters will see what people think about bringing back freight hauling as a meal ticket in the Inland Northwest.