METRO SHMETRO

I'm a native of Phoenix, I've seen it through its best and its worst, and right now Phoenix is at a crossroads and can make some choices that really affect it's future.

ASU Downtown Campus is open, and housing more than 500 students. The public is paying for a 1.4 billion dollar light rail system. The new convention center is about to open, and hold conventions larger than this city has ever seen. It is a crucial time for the city of Phoenix, and the whole region in general. Phoenix also has the highest DUI rate in the region, so I pose the question, don't we have a gigantic opportunity here?!

Rick Simonetta, the head train guy with METRO announced that the hours for the train operation would be 4-12 M-Sun, 4 being when the train leaves the first station, and 12 being when it reaches the end of the line. You would think with the levels of DUIs in the city, they would see the opportunity to possibly curb that and run the train later, to accommodate last call. One would think that with the ASU campus being full of kids going to and from tempe, they would want to accommodate that late night schedule. I would also guess that conventioneers and late night workers could take advantage of the later hours. They had a meeting scheduled today at 9AM, open to the public, so I went to see what was going on.

Rick Simonetta spoke first, indicating that they were open to changing special event and weekend hours to later times but that was it. The cost of running trains until 2AM on friday and saturday nights.... 350K per year. Every time someone mentioned staying open later, Mr. Simonetta threw up a roadblock, so it is obvious to me he does not have the same interests in mind as the rest of us.

There were arguments made that it would lower the cost of enforcing DUIs, would raise business levels at local shops and restaurants. Perhaps the best argument was made by a girl named Kimber, who brought it to our attention that lots of visitors would skip downtown Phoenix all together if they knew they would have a ride there, but no ride home back to the burbs. That actually got Vice Mayor thinking.

The city leaders are going to look at costs involving cost to run the rail, cost of connecting busses, and cost of dial a ride (ada requirement that it run the same hours as the rest of the system) and cost of security involved along with labor. The economic benefit of this could easily make or break the added cost or running the system. I vote for it, as much as it costs I think it could weight out nicely.