Link plans more evening and weekend service, rural pilots, four new EV buses to help power it

WENATCHEE — Link Transit is knitting together a long-range service push with a fresh round of battery-electric vehicles, positioning the system for a valley that’s adding people and apartments year after year.

On the planning side, board members reviewed six draft priorities for a new 10-year transit development plan. The headline item is service growth: More evening and weekend hours where demand justifies it, targeted frequency increases on busy urban corridors, and a different approach to lightly populated areas. Rather than launching full fixed routes to places that historically draw low ridership, Link is looking at one-day-a-week dial-a-ride offerings and “community van” partnerships — agency-owned vans placed with a local nonprofit or public partner that schedules trips around real needs in towns like Ardenvoir or the Lake Wenatchee/Plain area.

The demand for longer hours is already peeking through the data. Saturday now returns Link’s strongest boardings per service hour, with Sunday not far behind, even though both days run shorter spans than weekdays. Staff told the board there’s room to extend hours in the right places, guided by route-level performance rather than a one-size-fits-all change.

Link also flagged paratransit pressures. Link Plus, the agency’s door-to-door service for riders with disabilities, has been growing roughly twice as fast as fixed routes. A formal peer review is planned to sort out how much of that curve is demographics versus delivery model, because paratransit trips cost far more per ride than bus service — “basically a taxi service,” as one staffer characterized it.

All of this folds into next year’s budget. The draft 2026 operating plan lands near $33.6 million, up about $3.8 million from this year. Roughly $2.1 million of that increase is tied to growth in service; the rest is a core rise of around 5.5 percent, about even with expected subsidy growth. The capital plan sits near $15.5 million, helped by state and federal grants and planned reserve transfers.

On the fleet side, the board approved purchasing four 40-foot battery-electric buses and five depot chargers, a move that dovetails with Link’s push for more service hours while holding down fuel and maintenance costs over time. The equipment will come from BYD Coach & Bus (also branded “RIDE”) and include ABB-brand chargers, using Washington’s Department of Enterprise Services state purchasing contract. State Green Transportation grant dollars are expected to cover roughly 72 percent of the total, with the package capped just under $5.82 million before sales tax.

Delivery is staggered. Staff told directors to expect the chargers in service around October 2026 and the buses arriving by March 2027. Assembly is slated for Lancaster, California.

The vote wasn’t without debate. Non-voting board member Paul Parmley opposed the procurement, pointing to the federal prohibition on using federal funds to buy vehicles from certain Chinese manufacturers and arguing that the region should back U.S. competitors instead. Board member Matthew Hepner, along with Link staff, responded that this order is funded with state — not federal — money, purchased via the state DES contract, and that the buses are assembled in California by a U.S. workforce. Link also noted it has federally funded orders in parallel that meet Buy America content and assembly rules.

If the 10-year plan is the frame, the bus buy is lumber for the walls. More span on weekends and evenings only works if Link has enough right-sized, reliable vehicles and charging capacity to cover longer duty cycles without blowing up operating costs. The agency’s ridership trends are giving it permission to be selective — extend where productivity is already strong, test rural models that match trip patterns, and keep an eye on Link Plus as the valley ages.

Next steps land quickly. The board is scheduled to adopt both the budget and the plan’s priorities in November. Early in 2026, Link will run the deeper studies that turn those priorities into route maps and schedules: A park-and-ride utilization check, the Link Plus peer review, a rural service pilot, and a route-by-route look at where longer hours or more trip frequency pencil out.

In the near term, the agency is betting on pragmatic growth. They can use the weekends where they’re hottest, add evening trips in corridors that can carry them, and recruit new riders without overextending. The electric buses and depot chargers are a long lead-time purchase that arrive just as those changes should be maturing, easing fuel volatility, lowering emissions, and giving Link a little more room to run.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media