Spokane town hall lays out sidewalk inventory, accessibility gaps and four state funding options

At an evening town hall in Spokane, city officials presented a new sidewalk inventory and detailed potential funding models for repairing and completing the city’s sidewalks.

Arlene Feist, director of public works, said a recent data project scoping and condition scans show the scale of the problem: “We had about 860 miles of existing sidewalk on the local streets and another 337 miles on arterial streets,” and the city identified roughly “422 miles of missing sidewalk on the residential system and a 121 miles of missing sidewalk on the arterial system.” She told attendees the city also cataloged curb ramps and found about 10,200 with truncated domes, 2,000 without domes and roughly 16,000 corners with no ramp.

Those numbers, Feist said, come from a 2024 council‑authorized project that contracted TransMap to validate sidewalk presence and used scans from DeepWalk this summer; interns scoped about 860 miles between June and October and staff are integrating imagery and attributes into GIS to prioritize work.

The inventory, officials said, is meant to inform a program that balances safety, ADA compliance and long‑term cost. Feist noted crews currently install roughly 75–85 curb ramps…