4 ms·

I think it's more of an issue with city growth and layout. The biggest issue that mass transportation faces in American cities is sprawl. Subways/buses/etc wor

I think it's more of an issue with city growth and layout. The biggest issue that mass transportation faces in American cities is sprawl. Subways/buses/etc work great in New York and Chicago because they are far more compacted and urban than Houston or LA. I live in Phoenix, and there's been a great deal of hoopla surrounding the newly launched light rail system, but they'll be lucky if it serves > 1% of the population. Buses are underused here as well, since they have so much ground to cover. For my last job, the bus would have taken over 2 hours and 3 changes, as opposed to a 30 minute drive.

icey 18y ago
Well, here comes the anecdotal evidence. I think that the light rail will do significantly better than the bus system has - I think that it doesn't have the stigma associated with it that the bus does. Its intention is to get enough people going from the East Valley to the downtown corridor to take it to lighten some of the loads on the 60 and 10. I work up at Indian School and Central and will be at least trying to take the light rail from out in Mesa, even though I need to drive 5 miles to the station. Of course, Phoenix was built as a car town, so I don't think there will ever be adequate public transportation here just because everything is so spread out and there are no real centers of business other than the few downtown Phoenix / Tempe sorts of areas.