Light Rail Exceeding Expectations in Phoenix
Phoenix is hardly a transit-oriented metro area, but it does have a new light rail system and Mark Munro explains that it’s working out great:
Now comes Valley Metro, in one of the most apparently unpromising locations for transit of all, and it’s working, though not quite the way transit does in, say, New York, Boston, or Washington. Every day, Valley Metro attracts some 33,000 riders, way above the projected 26,000. But what’s interesting is the clientele. Unlike systems elsewhere, which are used principally by commuters, the 20 miles of rail in Phoenix running along the central spines of Phoenix and then through Tempe to Mesa are used largely by students shuttling between Arizona State University’s downtown and Tempe campuses, and people going to restaurants, bars, ball games, and cultural events downtown. Only 27 percent of the system’s riders use it for getting to work (compared to 60 percent elsewhere), which suggests that for now at least the Phoenix light rail will flourish as a sort of jitney service supporting a post-industrial metropolis’ ongoing cultivation of a classic entertainment district downtown, higher education there and in Tempe, and associated nodes of new and intensified development along Central Avenue.
Moving possibly intoxicated students around seems to me to be an underrated virtue of public transportation. Austin’s a fun town, for example, but when I was there I wished there weren’t quite so many people driving around after having so much fun. Growing up in New York then going to school in Boston and moving to DC, I’ve never really dealt with drunk driving youth culture on a consistent basis. In the parts of the country where there are no good alternatives I guess people are just accustomed to that sort of thing happening. But it’s really bad and dangerous.
35 Responses to “Light Rail Exceeding Expectations in Phoenix”
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October 15th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Buses that run all night are also a godsend for drunk people. Especially when the subway shuts down at 1 or 2 in the morning.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Yep. It was a seachange moving from the suburban/exurban deep south, where public transport is non-existent and drunk driving is not only socially acceptable, but almost socially expected, to urban Europe, where public transport is ubiquitous and drunk driving is severely frowned upon, both socially and legally.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
since Matt didn’t mention his favorite point, I will: Even if you don’t use mass transit, each person who does is doing you a favor.
Especially if they’re drunk.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I knew you would get that second link to a The New Racist piece before you did your daily endgame.
bravo, Matt, Marty Peretz is so proud and hopes you keep up the good work.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
“Light Rail Exceeding Expectations” … sounds sorta familiar to Minneapolis, another spawlish city.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
To piggyback off of what I was saying in an earlier thread, downtown Phoenix is home to a burgeoning art scene, with their First Friday artwalk being one of the largest in the country. The light rail not only allows more people to get downtown, it encourages them to stick around and spend money in the bars after the main gallery spaces close. And it definitely changes the perception of downtown, from a no man’s land no one wants to visit to a centralized and easily accessible location that might be fun to hit up on a weekend night.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
This is good news, but I’d make three cautionary points: one, the initial estimate may have been an intentional lowball – there’s some evidence that transit agencies have responded to the embarassing overestimates of the 1990s by setting the bar very low in order to claim ex poste success.
two: taking drunk drivers off the road is great, but if the bulk of the use is off-peak, the rail system probably isn’t doing much to fight congestion. To be fair congestion may not be so bad in Phoenix anyway, compared to denser cities, but if the rail line was sold to voters as a weapon against traffic, that isn’t quite what they’re getting.
Third, where is the cost in all of this? A rail line seems like an awfully expensive way to reduce drunk driving, particularly when buses could do the same thing from more locations from less money.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Nonsense. The Phoenix system is a boondoggle whereby rich liberal Denmark fanboys have hoodwinked loyal, right-thinking, SUV-driving Americans into paying for their Euro-fantasies — it’s certainly not part of any trend. Everybody knows loyal Americans vastly prefer the astonishingly superior ease, comfort and power of eight Saudi-slurping cylinders. Cities are dying. Just ask Pittsburgh. Suburbs are exploding with convenience and vitality. Even if misguided liberals manage to hoodwink voters into paying for more transit, this represents but a meaningless speed bump on America’s fast track to ever more heroic, ever more majestic sprawl, strip malls, and Applebys. Moreover, the tepid demand for walkable, urban neighborhoods overwhelmingly proves that Americans prefer the reliability of being utterly dependent on their vehicles. Otherwise they might be forced to join New Yorkers in suffering the slowest global commuting times.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I am feeling all nostalgic all over again for the 3 years I spent in Naples, IT. I could get nearly anywhere in the world – certainly anywhere on the continent – without a car. I walked 5 minutes to my commuter train that ran every 20 minutes, hopped off at the main train station, trained up to Rome and caught the train from the station to the airport, flew wherever I was going, and then took the train from the airport to the city center. To come home, I did the reverse.
Sigh.
I miss it.
I suppose I should consider myself lucky Amtrak added a second train between Seattle and Vancouver, BC. It’s a start?
October 15th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
To be fair congestion may not be so bad in Phoenix anyway, compared to denser cities, but if the rail line was sold to voters as a weapon against traffic, that isn’t quite what they’re getting.
Well, I don’t drive much so I can’t really comment on Phoenix traffic viz-a-viz other cities. But the stretch from downtown to Tempe is pretty brutal (a lot of freeways converging) so any relief is that aspect is useful.
But the more important aspect is what’s happening to the neighborhood. Downtown used to be thought of as a ghost town. Now, it’s becoming a more desirable place for young people to hang out. Given the light rail’s route from downtown to the main ASU campus, that will translate into downtown becoming a desirable place to live.
One of the main problems Phoenix has is sprawl, especially i/r/t congestion. Much of the center city is abandoned or sparsely populated, with most development along the fringes. If more people can be persuaded to move back into the center, the problems associated with sprawl can be abated.
A rail line seems like an awfully expensive way to reduce drunk driving, particularly when buses could do the same thing from more locations from less money.
1. No one in Phoenix rides the bus unless they can’t afford to drive. No one. But lots of affluent kids (and adults) ride the light rail.
2. It’s all about visibility. Buses in Phoenix probably go to every neighborhood in the city, but who knows what their routes are? But there’s only one rail line. Everyone who rides that train passes through downtown. They all see the neighborhood, and it becomes a potential destination.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
A rail line seems like an awfully expensive way to reduce drunk driving, particularly when buses could do the same thing from more locations from less money.
But that’s the thing — since rail lines attract riders who wouldn’t otherwise take public transit, they take more people off of the road than buses do. Presumably there were already buses going between Tempe and downtown Phoenix.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Ah, but remember: transportation systems’ greatest impact is not on existing commuting patterns, but on future ones.
Because there is a successful, popular, dare I say fashionable? light rail system in place, drawing riders who spend money, it’s going to shape Phoenix’s future growth – and let there be no doubt, Phoenix will have a lot of future growth – into a transit-oriented system. A considerable part of the commercial space built over the next few centuries – yep, centuries, look at Boston and NYC – is going to be built in a transit-oriented fashion near the transit stations, instead of near the highway interchanges that were not built instead. As a result, a similar-sized chunk of the commutes people in that growing region will be taking will be via transit, instead of via roads.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
The problem with Austin isn’t that we haven’t the money to get a fancy new light rail. It’s that we did in fact spend said money for said purpose but haven’t gotten anything to show for it …
October 15th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
We don’t have light rail coming to Austin. We have a poorly planned commuter rail system that’s a year behind schedule and that won’t go anywhere useful once it gets running.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Ryan Yin makes an excellent point. In Austin, we actually have a commuter rail system that was supposed to open on March 30th, 2009.
We’re still waiting.
There’s something really fishy going on with that.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Austin has buses that go almost everywhere starting from DT at midnight. There really is not that much of an issue in ATX with drunk driving. Houston on the other hand, is terrible. Houston’s light rail was a tragic failure as well. Nobody rides it, except homeless, and it goes from downtown to nowhere useful.
October 15th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
won’t go anywhere useful once it gets running.
Doesn’t it run from downtown basically down MoPac/183?
October 15th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Anthony, it doesn’t really go downtown. There is a downtown stop at the convention center, which isn’t walking distance to many employment centers. Most people would have to get on a bus at that stop to get to their final destination. The train won’t run on weekends. It runs 7 to 7 with limited stops and is expected to generate 1,000 riders a day, compared to the 30,000+ that the light rail plan rejected by voters in 2000 would have provided. If you work at Highland Mall or Frost Tower then the train might be useful for you, assuming you live either in Cedar Park or at Lamar and Airport.
Mack, the Houston light rail is a model. It’s short a line but it has extremely high ridership. It runs downtown to midtown and the museum district to Reliant. It’s really a nice line.
October 15th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
None of this discussion takes into account the fact that Phoenix is a gigantic but blister of a city.
October 15th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
33,000 rides a day in a city of a million and a half people and a metro area of 4 million.
It’s nothing but a glorified parking lot shuttle.
October 15th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
My “Moving possibly intoxicated students around seems to me to be an underrated virtue of public transportation.”
I agree. And not just students. I wish I could plop my potted ass on a trolley. I’d get out more. Drink more. Life would be good.
October 15th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
The Phoenix light rail is a nice way to get to Diamondbacks and Suns games, and it’s far cheaper than the price-gouging downtown parking garages. As long as you don’t mind driving 45 minutes to the light rail park-and-ride. The rest of Valley Metro suffers from the perception and reality that buses are for the poor.
Then there’s the suburb of Glendale, which foolishly gave away the farm to subsidize the AZ Cardinals’ football stadium and the Phoenix Coyotes’ hockey arena, on the far west side where there isn’t even north-south bus service. The whole project was conceived and built as a driving destination.
The whole area’s a giant fustercluck after every game and concert, yet the Coyotes are bankrupt and so are about half the bars and restaurants that rushed to open for the Super Bowl 2 years ago.
And Phoenix is a zoning nightmare: an archipelago of shopping malls and big box retailers in an ocean of nondescript, single family detached homes. “Convenience” stores are no more convenient than big box groceries because they’re not on residential streets.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Although with a much smaller ridership than Phoenix’s, the new Albuquerque-Santa Fe light rail has been very successful and is much loved by pretty much everyone, liberals and conservatives alike. Some of my most conservative family members have ridden on it several times and praise it. There’s talk of extending the line all the way down to Las Cruces (which is relatively near El Paso, for those not familiar with the region).
October 15th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
That’s another thing: with a transit system operating, there is now the possibility Phoenix could growth into something other than a giant butt blister of a city, through the promotion of walkable transit-oriented development.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Walkable for what — maybe five months a year?
October 16th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Like most people I know, I tried out the light rail when it opened. It was a nice novelty, but as everyday transportation it’s virtually no use at all. Hardly anyone in Phoenix lives within walking distance of a station. So you have to drive to get to it anyway. And it’s expensive. A single ride is $1.75. For a family of four going to the ballpark, that’s $14 round trip. You can park downtown for $5-10, maybe less. And it only runs three times an hour, and not on schedule. And if it’s the summer, you’ll be waiting on the platform in 100 degree heat even at 9pm. Why bother with all that? It just makes more sense to drive.
October 16th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Why bother with all that? It just makes more sense to drive.
33,000 riders a day disagree!
I don’t use Maryland’s MARC trains (the commuter rail). Other people find it invaluable, though.
October 16th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Mike @ 7 deserves some rebuttal.
First, he suggests agencies may be lowballing ridership estimates. Ridership estimates are done to determine whether a line should be built. There is no penalty for guessing too low, and a large penalty for guessing too high. We want them to choose the conservative figures.
Second, he raises the old “congestion” canard. The purpose of a transit line is not to reduce congestion for the automobile driver, but to reduce congestion for the transit rider. It’s true that building transit would reduce congestion for less money than building more roads if all else was equal. In reality, reduced road congestion induces usage that recongests the roads. It’s a turbulent flow problem.
Having off-peak ridership exceeding commuters is a really good thing. The ridership peaks are a big problem for transit agencies. Inducing use is bad on roads, but good on transit, because most systems have unused capacity between commuter peak loads, and adding transit riders can increase density to the point where good things happen, like large numbers of workers and customers at almost no additional cost, and increased land values that keep the rate of taxation low.
Thirdly, “Where is the cost in all of this?” This is just stupid. Having tried buses for years, Phoenix looked at light rail, decided it would be worth the cost, and has now learned it’s even better than they thought it would be to choose rail over bus. And now Mike wants them to reconsider and go back to buses? As if!
October 16th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Speaking of drunken youth culture, I’ve been finding stashes of malt liquor bottles (mostly empty) and the occasional Captain Morgan rum bottle, along with empty packages for Tiparillo Concord Grape flavored cigars (super yuck), in a rather remote corner of my backyard. I assume it’s local high school kids drinking the stuff, and if there are no cars involved I’m not enormously concerned, but I wish they would GET OUT OF MY YARD!!!
October 16th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Speaking of drunken youth culture, I’ve been finding stashes of malt liquor bottles (mostly empty) and the occasional Captain Morgan rum bottle, along with empty packages for Tiparillo Concord Grape flavored cigars (super yuck), in a rather remote corner of my backyard. I assume it’s local high school kids drinking the stuff, and if there are no cars involved I’m not enormously concerned, but I wish they would GET OUT OF MY YARD!!!
If you were finding empty bottles of 25-year-old single malt Scotch and Chateau Lafite-Rothschild ‘59, it would be safe to assume that high school kids were not responsible.
October 16th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
[...] Light-rail success in [...]
October 16th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
roac:
Walkable for what — maybe five months a year?
Umm.. no, you have that pretty much exactly backward, and actually a lot more so. People have some really screwy ideas about the Phoenix area climate; I guess cuz they freak out seeing 115 now and then in June on the Weather Channel.
I’ve lived here (Phoenix area) almost 30 years now after spending most of the first half of my life in Cleveland, Ohio (yeah, go ahead, I’ve heard them all).
Phoenix is eminently “walkable” (I’m speaking weather-wise now, as roac implies) just about any time day or night from around the beginning of October right on through to Memorial Day. That’s 8 months of very pleasant not-quite-summer (though we do feel pretty chilly on those occasional days in January when it doesn’t go over 60). Every month or so during those 8 months it rains a little, but not so you’d notice it much (other than the novelty aspect).
Just about any evening (except a handful of truly cool or rainy ones) during that long season when most of the rest of the country is huddled indoors people here can (and do) eat outdoors, along with the walkable thing. For example, I’ve spent every one of the 20-plus Thanksgivings I’ve celebrated in Phoenix eating outside comfortably in my shirtsleeves.
Certainly, during the 4 really hot months of actual summer (June through September) it is fairly brutal to walk any distance from mid-morning to sundown (call that around 8 PM-ish — no daylight savings time). So yeah, not very walkable. But early morning and after sundown, even in July? Not so bad (those are the times I walk my dogs, 12 months of the year).
See, here’s the thing: during the summer the true “brutality” comes from the direct rays of the sun (the radiant heat) not so much from the outside air temperature, largely because it’s so dry. After sundown in the summer here (the “bad” weather season) people do things like go out and play softball, even though the air temperature may still be around 100. During the day (weekends for us working stiffs) we go swimming (the walking is limited to the cooldeck).
Back East after sundown in the “bad” weather season (generously, mid-October well into April) it only gets colder, and people only spend much time outside if they have to (like shovelling snow). Yeah, you may be doing some walking when the weather sucks Back East (the majority of the year) but you’re usually pretty fucking miserable doing it. I know, I grew up doing it — the Cleveland School District did no busing when I was a lad, in my working class neighborhood only the dads had cars, and my high school was 3 miles from my house (and uphill both ways, though the grade school was just a couple blocks away). Half the school year homeroom was spent (painfully) getting the circulation back to my fingers and toes. Don’t miss shit like that at all.
Sure, Phoenix may be a “giant butt blister of a city” (it certainly is a sprawling motherfucker) but overall on the weather front it hands-down beats out every other area of the country except for the Mediterranean climate of Southern California. Also, no mosquitoes.
The light rail is pretty cool, too, and as the first, small, tentative step it is, working well IMHO.
October 17th, 2009 at 2:04 am
I’m guessing no roaches either, which was a problem my father had while living in San Diego. Not with a climate that dry.
October 21st, 2009 at 4:47 pm
[...] Phoenix’s new light system, on the other hand, is having great luck catering to drunk college kids. Ridership is far above projections, and it’s probably having the carry-on benefit of keeping intoxicated students off the roads. (Yglesias) [...]
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:15 am
dfh:
I think what you are describe is more like the Midwest than the entire Eastern U.S. Here in NYC, the really cold weather is only from late November to March, and even then there plenty of days that I’d call cold, but not too bad (nighttime is another matter). Sometimes you’ll get a cold day in early April, but judging NYC’s climate based on that is, I’d guess, akin to judging Pheonix’s climate by the occasional 110-degree day in May.
Two caveats, though:
1) It is kind of unpredictable. Sometimes you’ll get a cold spell in October. Sometimes you’ll get a warm spell in February.
2) It very much depends on your definition of ‘cold.’ I consider, say, 45 degrees, to be a bit chilly, but adequately comfortable. I realize I may in the minority on this.