Kim Curley, with Commute Options, serves on the state's Public Transportation Advisory Committee, which helped determine which projects would receive money through ODOT's Connect Oregon program. "We won big in Central Oregon with the transit center in Redmond which is funded and approved and going to be happening, kind of behind Fred Meyer. It’s going to be really an amazing hub for Central Oregon. Right now, our transit system is sort of based in Bend, and Redmond is much more central to the other communities that CET serves."

 

That project, called “Central Station,” will be built between Fred Meyer and Lowes on SW Kalama Ave. It received more than a million dollars from Connect Oregon; Curley believes it’ll be completed by 2018. She says the project is a key piece to expanding bus service in the region. "The next fixed-route for Central Oregon will be Redmond. There’s a lot of really focused effort on talking to the community – ‘what do you guys want, what do you need, what times do you need to go, how can we make this happen?’"

 

"The other really cool project connecting directly to that transit center is the Homestead Trail," Curley tells KBND News. "There, you get off the bus in Redmond and you wander up the nice off-road trail to downtown and hey, there you are. It’s a huge boost to mobility options here in Central Oregon."

 

Also receiving Connect Oregon funding: A taxiway rehab project at the Redmond Airport and phase two of the Bend Airport helicopter operations upgrade.