Commuter rail between Phoenix, Tucson gaining support July 1st, 2007
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.
Tucson set to approve streetcar route March 24th, 2007
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…
