Friday, November 20, 2009

What Would It Take To Make Our Area Into A Hub For Global Commerce?

That’s the question posed by a local transportation study we're partnering with several other agencies on. The Inland Pacific Hub (IPH) Transportation Study is a project to establish the Inland Northwest region as a multi-modal hub in order to increase international commerce.

The IPH is a very large-scope project, both conceputally and geographically. It covers ten counties in Washington (Adams, Asotin, Columbia, Ferry, Garfield, Lincoln, Pend Oreille, Spokane, Stevens and Whitman) and nine in Idaho (Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Clearwater, Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce and Shoshone).

Because the study area is so big, we have created a new website to reach all the people in those areas that are interested or may want to be involved. So, while it may sound far-fetched for Eastern Washington/North Idaho to be the ideal inland port, the area is actually perfectly situated and has many economic development opportunities already in place. Check out the Inland Pacific Hub website to see why.

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About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.