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.

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…

Enough people would board a train in the Valley’s suburbs that a future commuter-rail system would be as popular as some of the busiest lines in the West, new studies have found.

A trio of yearlong rail studies, in nearly final form, indicates commuter rail could carry almost 18,000 passengers a day by 2030. Planners at the Maricopa Association of Governments say, based on the findings, they favor a 105-mile, X-shaped system that could feature 33 stations and cost roughly $1.5 billion. That’s a little more than the Valley’s 20-mile, light-rail starter line.

The commuter-rail network would use existing freight track through downtown Phoenix
, with lines from Queen Creek to Buckeye and from Chandler to Wittmann…

Rest of the story in the Arizona Republic

Lily Leung reports in May 29, 2009′s Arizona Republic –

Surprise’s strategic placement of a park-and-ride lot near a railway stretching from downtown Phoenix to Wickenburg is the first heartbeat in an ongoing effort to bring commuter-rail service to the Valley…

The Surprise City Council on Thursday voted unanimously to pay… for land on the southeastern corner of Grand Avenue and Bell Road. The 3.27-acre lot is near the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and will be used for a 500-space park-and-ride facility… [initially express buses] to downtown Phoenix and Scottsdale. But city officials also see securing the property as a “good positioning exercise” if a commuter railway does come in within the next 5 to 10 years, said Randy Overmyer, city senior transportation planner.

Grand Avenue and Bell Road is a heavily traveled intersection that could be a possible commuter-rail stop, according to a Maricopa Association of Governments feasibility study slated to come out by year’s end…

Rest of the story at: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/05/29/20090529parkandride0529.html

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/