Light Rails, Trains, Streetcars, and Automobiles
Cholla Express: September 2020
If I had to grade the public transportation system in the Phoenix Metro Area, I would probably give it a C+.
You can get from point A to point B on a bus, though you might be walking a bit to your final destination, which is not ideal in the blazing heat. There are several express bus routes that connect Central Phoenix to the outside suburbs, including rapid routes that hop on the major freeways.
The light rail connects the West and East Valley via downtown Phoenix, and can be convenient if you’re traveling along the designated route. There is planned light rail extension that will connect downtown Phoenix to South Phoenix as far as Baseline Road.
The main problem with public transportation in Phoenix is that it takes too long. By car, it takes you about 35 minutes to drive from Glendale to Mesa, assuming it’s not rush hour. By public transit, this same trip would take nearly two hours. Similar quadrupling time — double time at best — can be expected if you rely on public transit. This is a tax on the time of people who don’t own cars.
By the way, I know this newsletter is becoming Phoenix-centric, but I promise to spotlight other areas of the state in future newsletters, like I did with Wickenburg in the June issue. In next month’s issue I plan to write about the city of Prescott, which was the first territorial capital of the state. The third item in this newsletter is about the railroads that connected the state in our territorial days.
What makes public transportation in Phoenix so slow?
For one thing, the buses and rails arrive infrequently. Your timing needs to be impeccable to avoid waiting 20+ minutes. Also, they both operate in normal street traffic. They stop at stoplights in addition to making stops for passenger pick-ups and drop-offs.
One solution would be to dig an underground transit system, but the ground is much too hard for that. Underground routes were never practical in Phoenix, not without a futuristic Boring Company-style operation.
Another possibility would be to build an elevated rail system, operating above traffic. This idea was floated in the late 1980s, yet the actual proposition to build 103 miles of elevated trained over a 30-year period was soundly rejected by Phoenix voters in 1989. This vote came just a few years after a successful proposal to expand the freeway system.
The modern day light rail project passed in 2000. At one point in time I recall seeing a blueprint for an elevated-rail design for the modern light rail, but in researching this newsletter, I couldn’t find it.
The bottom line is that Phoenix won’t be found on any top-10 lists of “Best cities to live without a car.”
In the next segment, I explore the ghost of Phoenix’s public transpiration past.
What might be its future?
The happiest, most eco-friendly, and most realistic future I can imagine is one with fleets of electric self-driving vehicles. Someone could push a button on their phone, get picked up in an elongated minivan with other passengers headed in a similar direction, and then get dropped off on location. This mode of transportation, if cheaper per-mile than ownership of a personal vehicle, would reduce traffic and create more public space by reducing the need for huge parking lots.
The Original Streetcars
Electric streetcars are one of the big “what ifs” in the history of urban transportation in America. In hindsight, we see the invention of the internal combustion engine, we see Ford’s innovations on the assembly line, and we see automobile destiny. And sure — everyone likes the freedom of being able to drive anywhere they want at any time.
But in the 1890s, most city infrastructures were lit up with electric trolleys.
In Phoenix, the streetcars were originally pulled by mule.
Here’s a clip from the Phoenix Trolley Museum:
In 1887, the first mule-drawn streetcar rolled on freshly laid rails down Washington Street and the growth of Phoenix rolled with it, the first city in Arizona to embrace mass transit. As the trolley system grew, so did the city. At its peak in the 20's, rails ran for over thirty miles along city streets carrying over 6.6 million passengers in 1929 alone.
One of the best articles on the streetcar (and its downfall) is this piece in the Arizona Capitol Times from 2015:
Maintenance and general upkeep of the system was costly and a continuing problem. In 1912, the Arizona Corporation Commission conducted safety hearings and ordered changes in the way maintenance was handled.
Controversies and disagreements with authorities continued until 1925, when the city of Phoenix finally took over management of the system.
By then the automobile was on the way to replacing the streetcar. In Maricopa County, the number of registered automobiles rose from 646 in 1913 to more than 53,000 in 1929, when it was estimated there was one car for every three people in the metropolitan area.
Ultimately, automobile domination was the path of least resistance, for reasons both political and practical. By the 1920s, the car was cost-efficient for the average American. A national interstate highway system was signed into law by President Eisenhower in 1956. For an up-and-coming city like Phoenix, nobody was about to stand in the way of the progress and promise offered by the personal vehicle.
Photograph: "Streetcar #43 in Phoenix," McCulloch Brothers Inc. Photographs, CP MCLMB A473. Arizona State University Libraries: Arizona Collection. Approx. date taken 1920.
Railroads
In late July, a train derailment in Tempe caused a massive bridge fire over Tempe Town Lake, causing a sensation in the state and even making national news. The bridge is now repaired, and trains are back to running across the lake. The sunset picture at the beginning of this newsletter shows the bridge in mid-August.
A brief explanation of the architecture of that bridge, from AZ Big Media:
Three previous railway truss bridges on the site, built between 1887 and 1912, were each washed away by floods.
The Arizona Eastern Railroad, part of the Southern Pacific Railroad, built the steel structure known as a truss bridge, with nine, Pratt-style spans stretching 1,291 feet from bank to bank in 1912. It provided a long-term solution to the destructive floods that impeded railway progress in the early part of the 20th century.
That piece also includes a conversation with ASU engineers on the history, structure, and possible future of the bridge.
Railroads played a huge part in the settlement and development of early Arizona. They were economic lifelines for the towns within the state, and allowed exports to and imports from across the nation. The map pictured on this segment is from an old social studies textbook, showing lines in existence by the late 1880s.
You can see that Prescott and Phoenix are both at a disadvantage on the early rail lines. Prescott wasn’t directly connected to Phoenix. Their connections to the interstate rails weren’t immediate.
The first tracks laid down were the major transcontinental rails cutting across the northern and southern regions of the state. The Southern Pacific Railroad was completed in Arizona by 1880. The Santa Fe Railroad (originally incorporated as the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad) was completed by 1883.
The line connecting Prescott to the Santa Fe opened in 1886.
The line connecting Phoenix to the Southern Pacific was completed in 1887.
In the mid 1890s, a line finally connected Prescott to the Southern Pacific line via Phoenix. (By that time Prescott’s connection to the Santa Fe was unusable due to faulty construction and poor maintenance.)
Railroad construction was a boon for the economic brokers of these towns — the local miners, farmers and merchants — as well as for the national bankers, surveyors, and emerging railway companies. One can imagine the political power struggles over the routes, funding, and rights of management for the new lines.
The railroad era in Arizona began to expire in 1912, when the territory became a state and created a highway department. Local, state, and federal spending on road and highway construction increased commensurate to population growth and demand.
While railroads like the one passing over Tempe Town Lake still serve to haul freight within the state and across the country, the story of the train is the same as the trolley — lost in competition with the automobile.
Maybe someday a high speed passenger re-boot of the transcontinental railroad project will bring our country together.
Sources (besides those already linked):
Arizona Transportation History, Report #660 – December 2011, Arizona Department of Transportation
A Sequential History of Arizona Railroad and Mining Development 1864 – 1920 by G.W. (Jerry) Irving, 1987 (Chapter 11, History of Mining in Arizona, editors J. Michael Canty and Michael N. Greeley)
Water, Water, Water
En lieu of a generalized “links and news” section, which may be retired from Cholla Express, here are a few stories about water:
Joanna Allhands of the Arizona Republic has done extensive research and writing about the ongoing water situation in Arizona. Her columns are essential for anyone seeking to learn about this complex but important issue. In early August, she covered the updates and latest concerns regarding the Drought Contingency Plan (DCP). In a nutshell, the DCP dictates the cuts each staked-interest in water rights shall make in the event of a water shortage, which we’re currently experiencing.
But the fundamental problem remains: The river still isn’t producing the amount of water we use in a typical year. We’re still draining the mighty Colorado.
This is called a structural deficit, and it’s something that DCP never was meant to fix. The agreement was a Band-Aid to slow, not stop, the level of decline, so the lake [Mead] didn’t suddenly crash on us. It was simply meant to buy us time, so the seven basin states could more fully address this imbalance and put the river on a more sustainable path.
That’s where we are now.
Read the full article here.
While it wasn’t completely bone dry, August didn’t bring the kind of downpours I was hoping for in my previous newsletter. Still, this Arizona storm chaser captured an epic shot:
The Salt River and the Gila River are the reasons why the city of Phoenix exists where it does. They have long been dammed up for control, and there are miles and miles of dry beds growing scattered vegetation. Arizonans have long pondered major developments along the riverbeds, imagining miles and miles of water recreation and waterfront property. The latest push is by a project called Rio Reimagined, brought to my attention by this piece in the Arizona Republic by Joshua Bowling:
Rio Reimagined has been selected as the latest Urban Waters Federal Partnership project, an EPA program that seeks to cut red tape, open up grant opportunities and help local leaders decide where to best spend federal money.
...
The Rio Reimagined project, pioneered by Sen. John McCain and announced by his wife Cindy in 2018, aims to restore and revitalize 58 miles of the Salt and Gila rivers, which wind through the Valley touching six cities and two Native American communities.
To read more about this project, check out the FAQ on the Rio Reimagined website.
Final Thoughts
Many thanks to my readers! Some of you are new subscribers this month, others have been reading from the beginning. To see the (young) archive of Cholla Express issues, click here.
This project has been life-giving for me, providing a mental escape from the daily barrage of stress that accompanies these times.
I’ll leave you with a picture of one of the biggest Cholla I’ve ever seen, spotted in South Phoenix:
If you have any feedback, tips, ideas or questions, don’t hesitate to send me a note! If you “reply” to the email, it will show up in my personal inbox.