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Phoenix is typical of many an American city — where once there existed a thriving web of passenger rail services, including streetcars, none remained at the dawn of the 21st century.

Today, Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the country with nearly 1.5 million residents; 3.7 million call the region home, and more people are arriving — nearly 100,000 per year. Also today, Phoenix is building a light-rail system that promises to connect residents across the region and bring back passenger rail to the valley of the sun.

Old Becomes New AgainPhoenix is no stranger to

passenger rail. In 1887, General Moses Hazeltine Sherman founded the Phoenix Street Railway System. Horse-drawn trolleys scooted along the first route, a short two-and-a-half-mile track on Washington Street. Electric-powered streetcars began operating in 1893, and suburban trains eventually served

Tempe and Glendale. The early rail lines were credited with boosting development along the rights-of-way.

After years of setbacks, from a fire that destroyed the streetcar barn and many streetcars to deteriorating infrastructure, Sherman sold the company to the City of Phoenix in 1925. Through a bond issue, the city purchased new streetcars and rebuilt the entire system, re-launching it in December 1928, almost 80 years before METRO is scheduled to open in 2008.

The Phoenix Street Railway had nine different lines throughout its history. On the verge of switching to buses in the 1940s, World War II gave Phoenix streetcars a reprieve to help meet wartime transportation demands. A fire in 1947 destroyed the car barn and all but six streetcars, sealing rail’s fate. After officials debated rebuilding and buying new streetcars, Phoenix became an all-bus city instead. Phoenicians bid adieu to streetcars in

February 1948. As one of the largest infrastructure

projects in Arizona history, METRO’S 27-station route will extend from 19th Avenue and Bethany Home Road in Phoenix, though downtown, past the airport, across Tempe Town Lake and though downtown Tempe to about a mile from downtown Mesa. Seven park-and-ride lots will dot the line with 3,600 spaces total. The double-tracked in-street line will operate down the middle of Phoenix’s wide avenues and will shadow some of the original system’s routes or travel within a few blocks of them.

Phoenix doesn’t have any abandoned railroad right-of-way, according to Marc Pearsall, Senior Transportation Planner for rail with the Arizona Department of Transportation. This is one reason the in-street option was selected.

“The ridership on our existing Red Line bus is so heavy at 12,000 per day, that the route of the Red Line became a candidate for light rail

Phoenix Light Rail: On Track

By Gena Holle

A computer-generated illustration of how Phoenix’s new light-rail system should look next year. Graphic Courtesy Valley Metro.

based on potential ridership alone,” Pearsall says. “The corridor links all of the hottest downtown and event areas of Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa, so it should be pretty popular when it opens.”

METRO will serve employment centers like Copper Square, St. Joseph’s Hospital and downtown Tempe. The corridor is filled with sports, entertainment and cultural facilities. Among them, Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team, U.S. Airways Center, Phoenix Convention Center, Phoenix Art Museum, Symphony Hall and Arizona State University. Sky Harbor International Airport, one of the busiest in the nation, will connect with METRO via free shuttle buses until a people mover is built.

Each station will have a unique piece of museum-quality art created by artists from Arizona and

around the nation who competed for the honor. Some works will be whimsical, others functional to provide shade from Phoenix’s blistering sun. A unique art feature is the Tempe Town Lake Bridge. An LED lighting system stretching the length of the 1,535-foot span can display millions of color combinations and different effects to create quite a light show. The bridge will be lighted at night and programmed for frequent color shifts and effects.

When revenue service begins, passengers will step aboard sleek low-floor Kinki Sharyo LRVs with 66 seats and a crush-load capacity of 200. Each vehicle will have four bike racks and room for four wheelchairs. Five of the 50 90-foot-long cars on order have arrived in Phoenix and are under construction at METRO’s maintenance facility. The Japanese

builder agreed to assemble the LRVs locally, saving taxpayers more than $1 million. Consists of up to three cars will operate along the corridor’s streets at the posted speed limit. LRV testing will begin this spring.

“They have the most robust air conditioning of any light rail cars ever made,” Simonetta notes. “We’ll have all state-of-the-art security in terms of surveillance cameras in the vehicle and outside of the vehicle at stations and park and rides.”

METRO is a separate entity from the bus operation, but traveling between the two systems will be seamless with adoption of the same fare structure. Like other light-rail systems, METRO will operate on a proof of payment basis with ticket inspectors roaming the line.

Trains will operate 18-20 hours daily on 10-to-15-minute headways during peak times, and off-peak,

Metro light rail moves closer to service as track is placed along Central Avenue and Washington Street. Photo Courtesy Valley Metro.

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passenger rail and it failed badly (by 61 percent). The voters just were not ready to provide tax support for public transportation. It was really a setback for the region in terms of rail development, but they were busy building highways back then so there wasn’t much attention paid to it.

“Another effort was made in 1994 by RPTA to go to the voters, this time with a multimodal approach that included some roads and street improvements; only part of the money would go to public transit and passenger rail. But the voters still weren’t ready and so they defeated that initiative pretty badly as they had the one in 1989.”

In the mid-90s, the cities started looking individually at what they could do, and the first city that stepped up to the plate was the City of Tempe.

“When they looked at the breakout of the votes from both the ’89 and the ’94 elections, they found that the

citizens in Tempe in both elections had voted in favor of the tax,” Simonetta says. “So Tempe went to the voters in 1996 with a dedicated half-cent sales tax to improve its bus system, but to also be part of a rail system, assuming that other cities would likewise pass local taxes. They passed the tax. The City of Phoenix then came back the next year. It was always thought that rail would start in Phoenix and Tempe, which is the core of the metropolitan area. But the voters in Phoenix said no.” It was close; the proposition failed by about 126 votes.

Ironically, the day after the defeat, someone remarked to the Phoenix New Times how they’d passed an the electronic billboard on the freeway warning of a high-pollution advisory that said “Use mass transit.”

“That was a setback for the region,” Simonetta says. “But finally in 2000, the City of Phoenix passed a dedicated tax and that sort of inked everything in terms of

every 20 minutes. During its first year, METRO expects about 26,000 daily riders.

The Long Road to Rail In the 1970s, city leaders,

concerned about traffic congestion and diminished air-quality, failed to persuade their conservative constituencies to raise taxes for transportation improvements. A cultural shift didn’t occur until 1985, when drivers, apparently weary of the Los Angeles-type traffic they thought they could avoid by not building freeways, had arrived. Approval of Proposition 300 increased the sales tax a half-cent to build a freeway system and to create the Regional Public Transit Authority (RPTA), which was tasked with developing a regional transit plan within five years, locating funding sources and then operating the system.

“Efforts were made between 1985 and 1989 to put that plan together,” says METRO’s Chief Executive Officer, Rick Simonetta. “When it went to the voters, it was a very ambitious plan. It had more than 100 miles of fixed-guideway

Map Courtesy Valley Metro.

definitely going forward with rail.”When Transit 2000 passed—65

percent to 35 percent—it opened the door to Federal Transit Authority (FTA) funds. According to the FTA, this was the third highest approval ever recorded for a U.S. transit and rail proposal. And, Phoenicians finally got Sunday bus service.

“Since the 2000 election, we’ve also had elections in Mesa and Glendale, so now we have four cities that are part of the rail system,” Simonetta notes.

Simonetta attributes the successes to a combination of factors, the efforts of Phoenix and Tempe’s mayors, Skip Rimza and Neil Giuliano, and the citizens that stepped up and said, “OK, it’s time we do this.” Help from two Arizona congressional representatives, Democrat Ed Pastor and Republican

J.D. Hayworth, didn’t hurt, either.“They became our champions in

Washington,” Simonetta says. “That really made a difference. We were able to get a full funding grant agreement for almost 50 percent of the project.”

Regional Growth Helped Passenger Rail

“I think Phoenix is a place that a lot of people move to from other places and I think it finally got to the point where people had experienced light rail in other cities and they believed that Phoenix should have a light rail system or a rail system of some kind,” says John Farry, METRO’S Director of Community and Government Relations.

Like Simonetta, Farry feels

the shift toward passenger rail was in part due to city leaders educating residents that light rail was something necessary now, considering Phoenix’s dynamic growth.

Another regional tax initiative went to the voters in 2004—Proposition 400—to extend and continue the 1985 transportation tax. It passed by 58 percent. One-third of the tax will go to transit with a portion dedicated to rail. Through 2025, Proposition 400 will expand the rail system by 27.7 miles in Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa and Glendale. Six extensions have been approved. (See map and sidebar.)

“The region has changed over the years,” says Simonetta. “Now it appears that there is pretty significant support for creating multimodal transportation

Metro’s Kinki Sharyo light-rail vehicles have begun to arrive for final assembly. Photo Courtesy Valley Metro.

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Phoenix METRO Light Rail Extensions

With the endorsement of Proposition 400 in 2004, the following METRO light rail extensions and planned opening dates were approved.

• Northwest Extension, 2012: This is the first extension of the light-rail starter line. It will travel 4.5 miles from Montebello and 19th Avenues north to Rose Mofford Park at Mountain View Road and 25th Avenue. The extension will include five rail stations and two park and ride facilities.

• Tempe extension, 2015: Trains will travel south on Rural Road from Apache to Southern Avenue in Tempe.

• Downtown Mesa, 2015: Tracks will be extended east along Main Street in Mesa.

• Downtown Glendale, 2017: Trains will be extended into Glendale; route not specified at press time.

• West Extension, 2019: Trains will operate along the I-10 corridor west to 79th Ave.

• Northeast Extension, 2025: Trains will operate along the SR-51 corridor north to Paradise Valley Mall.

alternatives. All the bus and rail improvements that have been made by the various cities since these taxes passed have resulted in significantly increased ridership. Express buses, especially those from park-and-ride lots are standing room only. We’ve had steady ridership increases every year, regardless of world events or economic events.”

Corridor Development Booms Studies have shown a trend of

robust development around light-rail lines and Phoenix is no exception. Well before METRO’s official February 15, 2005, groundbreaking, developers were already scoping out potential projects along the alignment.

“There has been a significant amount of multi-family development along the corridor as well as the City of Phoenix redoing the convention center in downtown Phoenix,” Farry

Map Courtesy Valley Metro.

says. “There’s a lot of plans on the books as far as other developments both residential and office, and that goes for both Tempe and Phoenix. There are cranes everywhere.”

The Phoenix Convention Center, near two rail stops, is tripling in size, and the 31-story Sheraton Downtown Hotel, will open in 2008. Simonetta estimates that $1 billion of new private investment has already gone in along the light rail line.

“I’m looking out my window at a new 36-story condominium project that is going up about a floor a week,” he says. It’s incredible. And there’ve been new condominiums

that already opened as long as two years ago in anticipation of this. It’s beginning to change the urban landscape and that’s what Phoenix has needed for such a long time.”

The Biggest ChallengesOriginally, METRO was to open

in three phases beginning in 2006. But when Simonetta came on board in 2004, he saw that wasn’t realistic because of the lengthy design phase and extensive input from residents. “We call it the ‘People’s Project,’” he says. “It’s just loaded with public input on everything from station design and the look of the cars to the alignment and station locations.

What I had to do was not popular. If you move the schedule, you’re going to extend the overhead necessary to carry the project so you impact the budget as well.”

A single opening instead of several will have its advantages. Every part of the community served by light rail will benefit from the same starting point. Simonetta believes that will stimulate higher ridership faster because of all of the destinations that will be served from day one. “We can do a real bang-up marketing job putting the word out there and promoting the integration of buses and rail, and really have a grand celebration.”

Metro’s yards and shops are nearing completion adjacent to Sky Harbor International Airport. Photo Courtesy Valley Metro.

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From now to the beginning of revenue service, Simonetta’s mission is to keep the contractors on schedule. To manage the 20-mile construction zone—the longest start-up track ever built—it was split into five different line section contracts. “Our challenge is to really watch every one of these milestones with every one of the contractors, to make sure that if they’re slipping behind that they somehow find a way to accelerate to get back up there.”

Just building a 20-mile light-rail line in the median of Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa’s streets all at once is keeping John Farry’s department on its toes.

“We went through a lot of effort to make sure that the community knew what was going on ahead of time,” Farry says. “And we’ve made sure that the community knows what’s going on during the construction. I think maintaining a positive attitude about what the value of this project will be once we begin operation, and continuing to ask for patience among the stakeholders, both business owners and operators and residents along the alignment, is important.”

Contractors have a good reason to do the best they can to minimize impacts to businesses and residents along the route. The budget includes

$2.5 million to reward contractors that go the extra mile to address stakeholder concerns and resolve problems quickly.

Ready for the Future but Remembering the Past

The Phoenix Street Railway System had a motto, Ride a Mile and Smile the While. Maybe METRO will resurrect that catchy slogan as Phoenix returns to it rail roots. At

the rate METRO is shaping up, there will be many smiles to go around when the sleek trains begin revenue service in December 2008.

“It’s a great time to be here,” Simonetta says.

Gina Holle is Senior Editor of the International Railway Traveler and author of The San Diego Trolley.

Metro trains will cross Tempe’s Town Lake on this bridge, illuminated by technicolor lights at night.

Photo Courtesy Valley Metro.

Photo Courtesy Valley Metro.