Light rail system for Tucson worth another look

MARK KIMBLE
Citizen Associate Editor
Aug. 9, 2001
Take a look at what passes for transportation planning in Tucson and Pima County.
More bus-pullouts. Double left-turn lanes added to some intersections. Other hopelessly congested intersections rebuilt - a process that requires homes and businesses to be demolished and only shifts the problem a mile or two or a year or two away.
Once in a great while a street is widened, but the cost is so phenomenal and the disruption so significant that it isn't done often.
The city, for example, plans to spend more than $357 million on transportation projects over the next five years. Of that amount, $158 million will go for streets. For that princely sum, we'll get 6 1/2 miles of streets widened, plus some minor improvements here and there.
Is this planning or is it only procrastination? Is there anything visionary or exciting about this program? Is there any expectation that spending all this money will do much of anything to move traffic faster?
Isn't it time to start thinking about something truly different?
More than 160 Tucsonans think so. They have formed a group called Tucsonans for Sensible Transportation that is pushing for inclusion of a light rail system if Tucsonans are asked to vote in May on a half-cent sales tax increase.
In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in light rail, with more than two dozen systems built and operating in cities such as San Diego, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Dallas and Denver. Many other cities are studying or designing light rail systems including Albuquerque, Boise, Austin and Phoenix.
Light rail has been a tough sell several places. On Tuesday, voters in Kansas City rejected by a 3-2 margin a half-cent sales tax for 25 years to build and operate a 24-mile light rail system. The proposal had been strongly supported by the Kansas City Star, which called it "an environmentally friendly way to slow future increases in traffic congestion" and "vitally important to Kansas City's future."
It was the fourth "no" vote for light rail in Kansas City, but supporters already are vowing to try again next year. In Phoenix, voters rejected funding for light rail in 1989, 1994 and 1997. But when congestion worsened despite a freeway-building boon, Phoenix voters last year OK'd a sales tax increase for a 24-mile light rail system and increased bus service. The trains are supposed to be running in five years.
Stephen Farley is the head and founder of Tucsonans for Sensible Transportation. He is a graphic artist, but has spent so much time researching light rail and its possible application in Tucson that he has become a recognized expert.
Next month his group plans to unveil a recommended light rail route for Tucson, along with well-researched cost estimates. Conventional thinking is that the best route would begin on East Broadway east of Kolb, head west on Broadway, jog north to touch the University of Arizona campus, pass through downtown, then head south along South Sixth Avenue, possibly as far as the airport.
In many parts of the route, the rail cars would travel on street medians. In other cities, traffic lights are triggered by the rail cars so the train stops only at stations.
Tucson and many other Western cities have been seen as unsuitable for light rail because of a lack of density. But Tucson has twice the average density of Salt Lake City, which opened a light rail system last year. Density is important only if people walk to transit stations. In most cities with light rail, passengers drive to park-and-ride lots or take connecting buses.
Skeptics wonder why Tucsonans who don't ride the bus would take light rail. Farley has two answers for that:
First, Tucsonans do take the bus. On an average weekday, 1 in 5 trips taken on East Broadway is in a bus. On South Sixth Avenue, it is 1 in 3.
And second, people who don't ride the bus will ride light rail. In Denver, 48 percent of the light rail passengers had not ridden local mass transit before; in St. Louis the figure was 70 percent.
There is no doubt that light rail is expensive. But so is widening roads.
A ballpark figure for building a light rail system is $30 million per mile - including the cars. That sounds like a lot of money, but a few years ago, the city spent $52 million to add one lane each direction to a three-mile stretch of East Speedway Boulevard - and you have to furnish the car. A pair of light rail lines can carry as many people as 16 lanes of a road.
One Tucson transportation "solution" mentioned often is a series of two-level or grade-separated intersections along a major street. But just one such intersection, at North Campbell Avenue and East Grant Road, would cost $24.1 million, according to a city estimate. And many such intersections would need to be built to have any significant effect.
Building a 15-mile light rail system would cost about $450 million - a staggering sum. But most cities take advantage of federal grants, which pay 80 percent of the cost. That would leave the city with $90 million to pay.
How would that local cost be paid? Phoenix and other cities spread the cost of building light rail over 20 years. If Tucson did that, it would cost about $5 million annually. The City Council is discussing a half-cent sales tax for transportation. Such a tax would raise about $40 million per year.
Tucson has had a three-decade flirtation with light rail.
In 1972, the city appointed a committee to study a light rail system. The federal government gave the city $25,000 for the study and indicated it was interested in paying the entire cost of a light rail system in a Southwestern city as a demonstration project.
Shortly after, a city official said the study money was "thrown away" with nothing useful produced.
Interest in light rail was revived in the late '80s with the Broadway Corridor Study, which proposed a light rail line along East Broadway, but the plan was deemed too expensive and dropped.
There remains one reminder of that light 1972 rail discussion: The developers of La Placita Village downtown wanted a station and they planned for it, by setting their garage back from South Stone Avenue. Now that area is just another parking lot.
We missed an opportunity back in 1972. Isn't it time to take another look?
Mark Kimble's column appears on Thursdays. He also appears at 6:30 p.m. Fridays on the Roundtable segment of "Arizona Illustrated" on KUAT-TV, Channel 6. Phone: 573-4662; fax: 573-4569; e-mail: mkimble@tucsoncitizen.com.