We actually took the kids to Steele Indian School Park for the Fourth of July show this year.
For many years, the big fireworks show was held downtown, and, by coincidence, we have a friend who owns a house within a couple blocks, so every years we used to go to his front yard.
Then, a couple years ago, they moved the show to the new park, which is 2 miles from our house. We thought we’d get a great vantage point, but there’s just enough big trees in the way that, unless you get on the roof, it’s not very good.
Even though it is only two miles, of course, all the streets are closed off and it’s too darned hot to walk (especially with a 4 year-old and a 1 year-old in tow.) So, this year we drove to one of the designated park and rides where special shuttle buses were running for free to the park. The ride (up Central Avenue) wasn’t too bad. People had been arriving for hours and so there was just a small but steady stream of people looking to catch the shuttle.
The ride back was a nightmare.
Apparently there was a car accident right in the intersection of the one street that was allowed to cross Central. (How do you have an accident in an intersection crossing a closed road?!)
What that meant was, not only did you have everyone leaving the park all at once to catch the busses, but the busses couldn’t get from the parking lot to the park, so the streets just jammed with people waiting for the busses to arrive.
When we finally did get on the buses, they were absolutely standing room, rush hour Tokyo packed, and the ride back was taken in 6 foot increments. It wasn’t pleasant. One of the reasons it was so messed up was that the route travelled right down Central in the midst of the light rail construction. (You see, there really is a tie-in to the light rail in this post.)
Anyway, the upstart of this was that some dumb SOB, standing on the other end of the bus was complaining long and loud about the light rail. He’d clearly drank all the anti-light rail kool-aid and was talking out his ass. (In exactly the same way the anti-light rail people do.)
“Blah, blah, blah… the train only travels 15 mph… blah blah blah… no one will use it… blah blah blah.”
Unfortunately, since he was at the other end of the bus and I didn’t feel like shouting at him, I just gritted my teeth and let him ramble on.
In any case, to set the record straight, I suggest that you go to The Valley Metro Rail Page and read up about it yourself. (Of course, you can argue that their information will be – obviously – biased, but the facts aren’t too hard to check.)
Basically, the light rail can travel at 55mph; however, because it travels along city street in traffic, the train will be programmed to operated at the designated, legal speed limit for the street it is traveling along. Combine that with the fact that it makes limited stops (too few in my opinion, as they dropped a few stations in the planning phase) and the lights will be synchronized to allow it to pass means that it will travel at near the speed limit.
I realize that no one drives at the speed limit in this town, but it is unrealistic to argue that the train should “speed” down the streets, and, if you’ve every travelled those roads during high volume times, no one actually even approaches the speed limit, so the train should be a faster alternative.
His other gripe was that no one will ride it. Well, obviously, that remains to be seen. Considering how awful this city’s bus system is, I’d argue that no one would ever ride the bus, either, but they do. if I hop on even the earliest Indian School bus traveling towards Central, it’s standing room only until it reaches Central and then almost everyone gets off and hops on a Central bus. Those people will absolutely be riding the light rail when it is operational.
The light rail route doesn’t really go much of anywhere that I want to go, but I have to believe that the route chosen, while it may have been a compromise, covers some of the most heavily trafficked bus routes.
This morning, the Arizona Republic ran an article on the light rail showing some pictures of the construction process. I was very pleased to see that each car can hold 8 bicycles, and with 3 cars per train, that’s a 24 bicycle capacity. I quite like that, that makes it viable for me to bike the 1 mile to the nearest stop, then bike the 2 miles to my office from the stop near work.
One thing I don’t like from these pictures – those seats look just as awful as the seats on the Phoenix bus. Every time I return from Taiwan, where I ride the bus a lot, I think, “It’s not so bad riding a bus, I must do that more often.” But, once or twice on those horrible, narrow, plastic, butt-numbing buckets and I decide to go back to riding my car.
I suppose if they put upholstered seats in the busses, some fourth-grade reject jackass with a finger up his butt would cut them up and generally vandalize them.
Hmm, guess this post constitutes a rant, now.