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Spring 2024

Transportation

WSU tailgating
Winter 2013

Cougar encampments

On home game weekends during football season, WSU’s Pullman campus goes through a rapid and dramatic transformation. As soon as students and staff vacate their parking lots, a new community, equipped with hibachis and hot dog buns, motors in. These RV-driving Cougar fans come with their families, friends, and sometimes their cats and dogs, too. They set up outdoor living rooms, roam through campus, and share food and fun with the friends and strangers around them.

“It really is its own culture,” says Bridgette Brady, director of transportation services. “What we have here is very important to WSU. And we are unique in how many … » More …

BIXI green bikes at WSU
Summer 2012

What moves you at WSU

One fuzzy old photograph of construction in downtown Pullman shows images of early days in the city: men laying a foundation by hand, a horse-drawn carriage on the street, a bicycle leaning on a post in the foreground. The photo has no date, but that bike, like a relic dropped by a time traveler, looks remarkably modern.

You won’t see a horse-drawn anything on Pullman’s streets now, except in parades, but you still see bikes among the buses, pedestrians, and a lot of cars.

Bridgette Brady, director of Washington State University’s Transportation and Parking Services, envisions bike use on campus increasing over the next … » More …

Spring 2010

What I’ve Learned Since College: Joni Earl ’75—CEO of Sound Transit

When Joni Earl ’75 joined Sound Transit in 2000, she was unaware of the crisis facing the agency, which provides public transportation for Snohomish, King, and Pierce counties. As the new Chief Operating Officer, she was asked to review the struggling $1.9 billion project to build a light rail 21 miles along the Puget Sound corridor from SeaTac Airport to Seattle’s University District. She discovered that it was several years behind schedule and would cost at least $1 billion more to complete. Three months after she took the job, her supervisor resigned. Earl became the acting executive director and later that year was hired as … » More …

Winter 2009

Design presentations from the “Powering the Palouse” symposium

Bob Scarfo, an associate professor with Washington State University’s Interdisciplinary Design Institute, and his landscape architecture students explore the benefits of re-introducing passenger rail between Spokane and the Pullman/Moscow area in response to shifting global trends, particularly associated with energy, water and climate change.

Presentations shown during the poster session of the symposium are accessed through links on the map below. (Click on a station to reveal a document [PDF].)

 

Additional presentations: Spokane Multimodal, RR crossings (PDFs)

 

Read … » More …

Winter 2009

Track to the future

It was only a few decades ago that Northern Pacific Railroad ran daily trains from Spokane through Pullman and down to Lewiston. And train cars loaded with students and steamer trunks came over the Cascades delivering their lively loads to packed stations filled with eager classmates awaiting their friends.

Bob Scarfo, an associate professor with Washington State University’s Interdisciplinary Design Institute, and his landscape architecture students have evoked some of that romance with a project urging the reintroduction of passenger trains to the Palouse. Only now, along with the romance of the rail, they’re citing contemporary reasons like oil scarcity, climate change, an aging population, … » More …