VANCOUVER, WA — The Clark County Public Transit Benefit Area Authority has officially opened The Vine on Mill Plain, a bus rapid transit line in the Vancouver, Washington, area that was designed by an HDR-led team.

In a grand opening event sponsored in part by HDR, the community celebrated the opening of its second BRT line. Service also recently began.

The Mill Plain BRT Project is a $50 million project that runs approximately 10 miles along Mill Plain Boulevard between historic downtown Vancouver and the growing Columbia Tech Center in East Vancouver.

HDR has been with C-TRAN every step of the way, from planning through final design, helping C-TRAN to secure Federal Transit Administration Capital Investment Grant funding, and continuing into construction and implementation support.

“It is gratifying to see this project come to life,” said Tom Shook, HDR’s Oregon Business Development Leader, who also led HDR’s design services on the project. “Through our design, we worked to ensure that the project served riders’ needs while staying on budget — and opening early.”

HDR has led many BRT planning, design, and implementation projects across the U.S. and beyond. The firm has contributed to South Carolina’s first BRT system, an expansion of the Twin Cities BRT, and Albuquerque’s first urban transit system to use a dedicated guideway.

HDR's experts have an understanding of rapid transit system requirements, operations, and administration; experience with transportation facility and corridor functional definition, site assessment, and preliminary design; and a background in understanding the impact of transit initiatives on the customer.