When I was five or six, growing up in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood, my dad and I would occasionally ride the bus downtown for a weekend “adventure.” I remember gawking at the huge green, white, and blue buses, straining to figure out where the money from the coin drop went, and sitting at the edge of my fuzzy seat as I struggled to get a view out of the window. Once we arrived downtown, the park and the mall provided a bit of entertainment, but really, it was the novelty of the bus that made these “adventures” such a blast.

But public transit shouldn’t be a novelty. It should be a viable option for all who live here. It should be fast, frequent, and easy-to-use. But unfortunately, current Spokane Transit Authority service comes well short of this mark. It’s still easy to miss a bus and be forced to wait half an hour for the next one. It’s still impossible to take a bus late on weekends. And—get this—to get from, say, the South Perry District to Gonzaga University, you still have to transfer buses downtown, turning a quick five minute ride into an hourlong trip. No wonder people drive.

Knowing this, I can’t express my excitement that fifteen years after those initial bus “adventures,” we finally have an opportunity to make transit less of a novelty in our city.

In November, residents in the Spokane area will vote on Proposition 1, a measure which will, if passed, extend transit service past 11 p.m. on Saturday nights, enable more connections without a transfer downtown, and develop higher-frequency lines throughout the system. In addition, the plan would create a bus rapid transit line from Browne’s Addition through downtown and the University District to Spokane Community College.

Consider the possibilities this enables. Students would be able to find less expensive housing in Browne’s Addition and ride to WSU Spokane, EWU Spokane, Gonzaga, or any of the other institutions nearby. Those insane downtown transfers would become less necessary with four new transit centers and a new route directly from South Perry to Gonzaga. Weekend nightlife-goers would be able to catch a $1.50 bus instead of a $20 Uber ride. And with more frequent service on a number of routes, timetables could become a thing of the past, making transit more convenient. Even non-users would see benefits; on South Regal or Indian Trail, where traffic has increased significantly in recent years, more buses would pull more cars off the road, decreasing commute times for everyone.

It’s always your choice whether to take a bus, a car, a bike, or your feet to your destination—or for that matter, whether to approve Proposition 1 in November. But as a result of these improvements, transit would become a more convenient, easier-to-use option for everyone.

And that’s no small thing.

Anthony Gill is a Spokane native and recent graduate of Santa Clara University. He is the founder of Spokane Rising, an urbanist blog focused on ways to make our city a better place to live.