Friends of Transit

Posted on 28. Feb, 2010 by Tony Arranaga in Featured, News

Metro Phoenix transit advocacy group Friends of Transit invited me to tweet from the annual Friends of Transit conference at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown on Friday morning. According to its website, Friends of Transit educates the Greater Phoenix community about the benefits of a well-designed and accessible mass transit system.  As you can probably surmise from the name, conference attendees included representantives from companies like Valley Metro, METRO, and private companies like Bombardier (manufactures of the new Sky Train at Sky Harbor).  Most of the conversation centered around light rail and how it’s becoming a game changer as a major component of a balanced regional transportation plan.  I’m honored to be asked to tweet from the event, but there were two other highlights for me.  The first was seeing an artist rendering of the new Sky Train station at 44th Street. I took this photo with my camera during the conference:

artist rendering: City of Phoenix Aviation Department

Jane Morris from the City of Phoenix Aviation Department gave the presentation and says the automated people mover from the 44th Street light rail station and terminal four should be complete in 2013.  Construction on a second phase connecting the rest of the airport will continue following the completion of phase one. You can find more information and artist renderings on the project here. The other highlight for me was meeting METRO CEO Stephen Banta. The new top executive comes to Phoenix from Oregon’s TriMet (source). Many transit planners and carfree advocates look to Portland as a model city, so it will be interesting to see where Banta takes light rail in the next phase of operations. Banta also said he would give me some suggestions for places to eat and grab a cup of coffee for when I make my trip up to his old stomping grounds here in the next several weeks.

Tags: Bombardier, METRO, rail, Stephen Banta, Valley Metro