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Link Transit: this small but efficient transit authority has restructured to provide better service.

Article Excerpt
Located in Washington State nestled between the Cascade Mountains, the Columbia River and the Wenatchee River is the city of Wenatchee. The area, served by Link Transit, is surprisingly dense due to its geographic location. General Manager Richard DeRock, says, "For a town of our urban area, you would not think that an area this size would have the kind of congestion that we do, but it's the geography that drives it."

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ESTABLISHING TRANSIT

After a Special Transit Conference in 1989, elected officials passed a resolution for the need for local transit. A Public Transportation Benefit Area was created in Chelan County and the Eastmont and part of Douglas County. The following year voters approved a sales tax increase and the new Chelan Douglas Public Transportation System d.b.a. Link Transit was established.

Initially the agency was a fare-free system. DeRock says, "It really irked a lot of the conservative people in our community." The feeling was that people should be paying something for the cost; when it's given away, it's just a waste. "We were building a transit center in downtown, we were building an operation's base out in the north part of town," he says. "What I've been told, we were being viewed as being profitable. 'Why are you spending all this money?'" He states, "We're a conservative community, our economy is not wonderful--wasn't at the time--'Why are you spending all this money on things that really aren't necessary?'"

In 1999, the voters repealed a motor vehicle tax and half of that money had gone to transit. Every transit system in the state lost 45 percent of its funding. DeRock explains that most of the systems in the state went back to their voters and tried to raise local sales tax to offset what they lost. "Here at Link, the decision was not to do...

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