Arizona Rail Passenger Association

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

Full story by Sean Holstege in the Arizona Republic, 14 April 2010

Changing demographics, ridership patterns point to different lines in future

Regional planners are mapping new light-rail lines in places that were inconceivable a few years ago, as they grapple with how urban Arizona takes shape in the coming half-century.

Preliminary studies show that sufficient demand will exist for light rail to succeed on 44th Street, Camelback Road, south Central Avenue, Bell Road and other routes not previously planned, building a web far more expansive than what is currently envisioned…

Proposed METRO Rail Station Name Changes.

Transit systems across the world all have stations named for landmarks, to help visitors and residents find their way. If Washington DC named their stations the way the Phoenix stations are named, they would have a station called “12^th Street and Independence Avenue SW” instead of “Smithsonian.”

I served as a volunteer on opening day. On that day and ever since, tourists have asked me what station the Airport is at, and does the train go to Sun Devil Stadium? Even Congressman and former Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell didn’t know what “Veterans Way and College Avenue” was – it needs to be the Sun Devil Transit Center.

Short, simple station names help riders find their destinations quickly. They help tourists know what is along the line. They make maps easier to read. Stations become sources of neighborhood identity. Naming stations after street addresses is cold, confusing and unhelpful. When riding the #17 bus, the announcements say, “Approaching 16th Street” and “Approaching 24th Street” — not “Approaching 16th Street and McDowell” and then “Approaching 24th Street and McDowell” — the McDowell part is obvious because that’s the bus you are on. Repeatedly saying “…and Central” on the train is silly and pedantic.

Furthermore, the stations with two platforms need to be named as one station. Signs there should be updated to, for example, “For Dobson, use platform on 1st Avenue.” Boston eliminated confusing one-way station names (Milk one way, Water the other) in the 1960s.

These station names must be changed as soon as possible.

The entire line should then resume the Red Line name, as it replaced the (pre-metro) Red Line bus… and before that, the Washington Street #1 streetcars which carried red marker lights since the 1920s at least… giving the Red Line an eighty-plus year history. As other lines are built, they should resume the color line names (Green Line on Thomas — not Highway 10!, Blue Line northeast on Highway 51, etc.)

– William Lindley, Arizona Rail Passenger Association. 2010-02-25.

The City of Tucson in late May ordered seven modern streetcars from Oregon Iron Works (www.oriron.com), the first American company in sixty years to manufacture one. The company, in Clackamas, Oregon, has received orders both from Portland and now Tucson. The company, founded in 1944, builds bridges and military patrol craft; and especially because of “Buy American” requirements, could capture a fair percentage of orders from the dozens of cities across the country considering streetcar service.

Story from Oregon Public Broadcasting: http://news.opb.org/article/5078-tucson-orders-seven-streetcars-oregon-company/