Two things;

First, have you been to Spokane? I mean, talk about complete lack of city planning: the city is arranged in a north/south strip along Division St making it nearly impossible to get from north Spokane to downtown; the downtown area is hemmed in by a river on one side, a hill on the other, and so it got stretched sideways making it a bitch to walk across; the roads on the south hill disappear and reappear at will, and there is basically only one traffic corridor into downtown; there are massive abandoned factories in the middle of town and bordering downtown, isolating that commercial district from the rest of the town. I could go on.

Secondly, there kind of is a link between the airport and downtown. There is a rail link that is only used by a couple of cruise ship companies in the summer. Does anyone know why there isn't some sort of commuter rail run on that line more often? It seems like it could be profitable, especially in the summer. I used to get people asking me all the time how to get from downtown to the airport, and the only answer is "uh, a taxi?"