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The State of Arizona and its urban areas continue to exhibit some of the highest population growth rates in the country. Growing even faster is the use of the automobile, both because there are ever more of them and because outward urban expansion means that they are driven more miles. The result is overcrowded highways in urban, suburban, and rural areas throughout the state.
The Arizona Department of Transportation, counties, and cities have expended considerable effort and resource to expand highways to keep pace with the increase in vehicle miles traveled. In 1985, Maricopa County voters elected to tax themselves at the rate of a one-half percent sales tax to build an urban freeway system centered on Phoenix and radiating into its neighboring cities. That effort after 15 years has added many miles of new freeways to complement the fairly meager mileage of Interstate highways allocated to the Phoenix area - only Interstate 10 and Interstate 17. ADOT also built U.S. 60, the Superstition Freeway, with state and federal primary highway funds.
The result, although the 1985 freeway network is not as yet complete, is many miles of new freeways particularly in Phoenix and Tempe, and now further outward into other cities. Yet it is already apparent that the new freeway lanes are in some cases already at capacity in peak commuter hours and that all of them will soon attain that overcrowded condition. In Phoenix, as has been demonstrated in so many cities, freeway construction cannot keep pace with the overwhelming increase in travel demand. The Maricopa Association of Governments forecasts that all freeways in the Phoenix metropolitan area will be even more crowded by 2015 than they are today -- despite the most intense freeway construction program in the country. The situation is the same in rural areas: ADOT will testify to the constant requests for improved highways from the smaller towns and rural areas.
These conditions are not limited to Arizona. Other states have seen the same growth patterns and the same resulting limitations in building ever more freeways. Many are now turning to various forms of rail passenger service as a more economic and less intrusive way of adding capacity to their transportation systems. The cities of Phoenix and Tempe have already passed city sales tax increases to add urban light rail transit in their jurisdictions. The Arizona Rail Passenger Association concludes that it is time for Arizona to consider seriously the addition of new rail passenger service to provide alternative travel capacity complementing the increasingly congested system of streets and highways.
ARPA, a volunteer educational and advocacy organization founded in 1978, advocates a balanced transportation system that integrates passenger rail service with streets and highways, air travel interfaces, and local and intercity buses. The result of such integration will be a travel network that will make the most of the resources available, dramatically reducing travelers' dependence on the automobile.
When integrated with multi-use paths, trails, sidewalks, and changes to planning and zoning, the result will be an Arizona far more amenable to pedestrians. This reduces the number of trips which require driving a car or taking transit, and reduces the distances for the average trip, so demand for transportation during peak periods is decreased. Improving Arizona's urban transit systems, and using existing railway lines for passenger travel, benefits our streets and highways, Arizona's citizens, visitors, and the environment.
On the following pages, ARPA presents a set of goals that represents its vision of rail passenger services that can and should be implemented to achieve the multi-modal objective cited above. An overview follows, with details of needed upgrades to tracks, signals, and stations. Appendices contain details of specific ARPA proposals.
Table of Contents, First page >>
List of Figures
