Arizona Rail Passenger Association

NOTE: There will be a moderate charge for lunch, but the meeting itself is free.

We invite you to attend the annual southern Arizona ARPA mem­bership meeting in the upstairs meeting room of Maynards Market & Kitchen in the historic Tucson train depot, 400 North Toole Avenue in Tucson on Saturday, October 31, 2009.

The ARPA Board of Directors will meet at 10 AM, which you are welcome to attend. The program will start at 12:30. Gene Caywood will give Old Pueblo Trolley’s outlook on the future now that streetcars are running into downtown Tucson for the first time since 1930. ARPA President Rob Bohannan will tell us of the opening of the highly successful Phoenix light rail transit line. Jay Smyth, Chair of the Southwest Rail Corridor Coalition, will fill us in on current prospects for high speed trains in Arizona.

There will be a moderate charge for lunch, which will be served at 12 noon. After the meeting, you may visit the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum and enjoy a free ride on Old Pueblo Trolley’s streetcar through the new 4^th Avenue underpass.

RSVP to azrail@azrail.org or the ARPA line at 480.947.5710 …

by Glen Creno in The Arizona Republic, Feb. 29, 2008

Plans for passenger rail in Arizona are moving forward, but significant hurdles remain before any system is built.

The Maricopa Association of Governments has released a long-awaited draft of its commuter-rail study, which outlines three options that would haul commuters from Phoenix suburbs into job centers in the central city. At the same time, key players in developing high-speed rail between Phoenix and Tucson have joined together to seek money to plan a system…

Rest of the story in the Arizona Republic

from the Arizona Republic, 29 Jun 2007

Commuter rail in Arizona is beginning to gain traction, backers of building a so-called “heavy rail” line said this week.

More than 100 city, state, county and rail advocates met Thursday in Mesa to begin hashing out the pros and cons of high-speed trains that would link cities as far flung from each other as Phoenix to Tucson and counties as vast as Pinal to Maricopa.

“We must have rail that connects Phoenix to Tucson,” said Mesa Vice Mayor Claudia Walters in kicking off the meeting of Commuter Rail Stakeholders Group…

ARPA members Jay Smyth and Sam Morse are quoted.

Rest of the story in the Arizona Republic

Tucson’s modern streetcar project… is approaching the end of its gestation period… The City Council is scheduled to vote March 27 on what is called “the locally preferred alternative route.”

The route begins near Helen Street and Campbell Avenue, just south of University Medical Center. It will head south on Cherry Avenue to Second Street and the Main Gate shopping district, then go west on University Boulevard and south on Fourth Avenue.

From there it will go under the new and as-yet-unbuilt Fourth Avenue underpass. The streetcar will then head west on Congress Street and end up west of Interstate 10 in the cultural campus now under construction near the base of “A” Mountain…

Rest of the story in the Tucson Daily Star