Arizona Rail Passenger Association

From the August 1911 Arizona Gazette, published in Phoenix (later the Phoenix Gazette and now merged into the Arizona Repubic). Click for full-size.

by Jahna Berry – May. 26, 2010
The Arizona Republic

Phoenix revealed the design of the train cars that will transport millions of passengers around Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Under a $260 million contract with a Canadian firm, Bombardier Transportation Holdings USA, Bombardier will design and build 18 train cars
and a maintenance facility…

Each car is 36.5 feet long, 9.5 feet wide and 11 feet high… Each car can hold about 53 people and each train will have three cars. The first test car will arrive in August 2011…

[The first stage of Sky Train, between Terminal 4, the east economy parking lot and, METRO, will open in 2013.]

From the East Valley Tribune:

Mesa has struggled for years to make its mile-long downtown vibrant, but a new light rail segment is triggering calls to extend the city’s urban core by several miles.

Key city officials say they want to expand the downtown-style streetscape at least two miles to the west, where the Metro system now ends at Sycamore Street.

Nick Davis, whose family owns the Citrus Grove trailer park, [said] “Main Street is ripe for redevelopment if light-rail is built on it and the city incentivizes it. I honestly believe that it can happen if you have a real downtown in Mesa, something that people are really proud of and proud to go down to.”Davis said he was a skeptic of light-rail’s redevelopment potential until watching new businesses sprout up after the initial 20-mile segment opened in late 2008. His family owns a plaza in Phoenix at 4700 N. Central Ave., which is south of Camelback Road. Davis said that part of Central enjoys much of the life that downtown Phoenix has, demonstrating a large amount of redevelopment can take place over a wide area.

The economy could make redevelopment tougher now, but Davis said he’s encouraged by how quickly light-rail improved an area he recalls as lifeless growing up in the 1980s and ’90s…

Dated 2010-05-17. Rest of the story here.

by Sean Holstege – May. 11, 2010
The Arizona Republic

…modern, electrified streetcars are making a comeback around the country, including in Arizona.

In February, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded Tucson a $63 million grant to help build a 4-mile streetcar line linking the University of Arizona and downtown. Arizona’s second-largest city beat out hundreds of competitors for the money.

In Tempe, momentum is building behind a proposed 2 ½-mile streetcar line along Mill Avenue that would connect with the Valley’s starter light-rail line. Planners found that the streetcar is cheaper in an era of tight budgets and quicker to build than an originally conceived light-rail spur on Rural Road…

Rest of the story in the Arizona Republic