We need high speed rail service between Nogales, Tucson and Phoenix
by Hugh Holub on May. 24, 2010, under land use, tucson life and heritage
High speed train
If you’ve ever had to drive back and forth between Tucson and Phoenix frequently, you’ve probably dreamed of a high speed train on the I-10 corridor.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be sitting in the club car having a Corona instead of dodging 18 wheelers?
Why can’t we have a train?
In fact, how about a high speed rail link starting in Nogales, running by the Tucson International Airport, on into downtown, then on to Phoenix?
There are over 100 shuttles running between Nogales and Tucson already, so there’s a proven demand for mass transportation service between the border and Tucson.
With the trolley link from downtown to the U of A, connecting the high speed rail to a local system would work. The old El Paso and Southwestern train station on West Congress is the perfect intermodal connection point.
As Tucson evolves its in-city light rail system east down Broadway and north down Oracle Road, it only gets better and better.
Phoenix is way ahead of Tucson in developing a light rail system, and once one gets to downtown Phoenix, there’s lots of access in that city via their light rail network.
So why hasn’t this happened?
First, it would cost gobs of money. The federal government is dropping hundreds of millions into high speed rail development, but the Tucson-Phoenix corridor just isn’t ready to get into the money line. There are still oodles of feasibility studies needing to be done.
But the biggest problem has been Union Pacific railroad and before them Southern Pacific.
Passenger trains are not something they particularly like on their tracks. They are a freight company, with trains running on the main line about every 20 minutes. You’ve probably noticed this at grade crossings. Freight trains have the right-of-way, so the passenger trains have to wait for the freights to go by. This is partly why you can never be sure when you’ll arrive at a particular destination on the Sunset Limited.
For a high speed rail system to work, it would need its own track system. Whether or not Union Pacific has sufficient right-of-way to add a third track on its main Tucson to Phoenix link is a big question to resolve. My guess is they probably do have the right-of-way needed for most of the route. But there’d have to be a lot of expensive construction to upgrade road crossings to accommodate a 150 mph train passing by. But obviously this can be done since they’ve done this all over Europe.
However, the development of a rail system may not be as costly as widening I-10 to 4 lanes each way, which is inevitable under current circumstances. There has actually been talk about building a brand new freeway because the capacity of I-10 is being strained.
The biggest problem may be to keep the cows off the tracks.
Another question is how many people will give up their cars to travel between the cities?
My guess, purely anecdotal, is that we would if we could get where we need in either city once we’ve made the trip between the cities. The main reason I travel frequently to Phoenix is to deal with the state legislature, or various state agencies headquartered up there. Actually, if there was rail service, I’d be inclined to make the trip more frequently knowing I could get back home and not be beat to crap after a 4 hour roundtrip drive.
And then there are the better airfares out of Phoenix. I don’t know how many times I’ve driven to the Phoenix airport to fly off somewhere. Oops….maybe the Tucson International Airport crowd would oppose a rail link to the Phoenix airport.
So how about a passenger train between Nogales, Tucson and Phoenix? Any comments?
May 24th, 2010 on 7:07 am
I would love a rail system from Tucson to Phoenix. It would save hours of headache for me. We would also probably visit family more often, assuming that the tickets are extremely affordable and that other mass transits were improved.
May 24th, 2010 on 7:10 am
No way do we need this. Lets build a cross-town freeway instead. THAT we can all use.
May 24th, 2010 on 7:30 am
That would solve alot of proplems. Tucson is to cheap to do it. The city managers would spend millions lining people pockets doing corridor studys and buying existing property and it would take 20 years for them to make up their minds. By that time there will be no water and Tucson will be a dust town again. So who needs a train?
May 24th, 2010 on 8:43 am
If the State will sell the air rights over I-10, a solar powered high speed line could wisk us to downtown Phoenix. This public-private model is being actively pursued in Texas where it is planned to have mixed freight and passenger service from Dallas to Austin,etc. Except for the severe mountain grades there’s no reason not to consider a line from Nogie to Flag,either.
May 24th, 2010 on 8:43 am
High speed trains going over 100 miles per hour with about 300 passengers take the capacity of two to five freight trains that can only travel safely between 10 to 70 miles per hour (by law), depending on track curvature, track conditions and other physical factors that don’t allow high speeds. Since two to five freight trains are the equivalent of 560 to 1,400 semi trucks on the road, the one high speed train with 300 passengers would be moving those trucks from a privately-owned and maintained track onto tax-paid roads. Since one semi truck is the equivalent of about five cars, one high speed passenger train with 300 passengers would put the equivalent of 2,800 to 7,000 cars back on tax-paid roads. The best solution is to put more freight from trucks onto freight trains and off the highways, leaving highway expansion room for stand-alone passenger train tracks that can truly travel at 100-plus miles per hour speeds.
May 24th, 2010 on 8:50 am
I want both; a high speed rail system from Nogales to Phoenix, stopping in Tucson of course and a north/south freeway system. The City can spend money adding a bike lane to each side of 22nd between Camino Seco & Harrison but not move car traffice from the southeast to the northwest side of town. When will our City & County government wake up and do the right things? Let’s just keep adding sidewalks where people don’t even walk. Dah!!!!!
May 24th, 2010 on 8:55 am
When the high speed train pulls into Tucson, then what, get on a bus? High speed rail would work in the East because the densely packed cities have inner-city rail systems to move people around, the West doesn’t. Phoenix’s light rail is a commuter train, intended to move suburban people in and out of the city, not take Phoenicians to Peoria for appointments or dinner.
The cost of such a train would require at least two million riders a year to avoid an enormous annual government subsidy to keep the ticket cost down. If the ticket is the same or more than a tank of gas, people will drive. If the ticket is $20, 2 million riders would provide $40 million for operation and debt repayment, which is about the estimated annual cost I’ve seen in the numerous studies about Tucson-Phoenix high-speed rail. There’s no way this train will have 2 million riders a year (that’s 5,400 a day) at the start and perhaps not until the state’s population doubles, which means government subsidy for operation. And if the enormous cost to build it is not the deal breaker, then the subsidy is.
As I wrote in an op/ed for another paper four years ago – Ain’t never gonna happen.
Having said that, the only place to put such a train is the I-10 median either at grade or elevated.
May 24th, 2010 on 9:12 am
I’ve always been fascinated by the duality of folks wanting mass transit but opposing the land use densities that make mass transit work. Then they complain about all the virgin desert getting trashed by new development.
May 24th, 2010 on 9:32 am
I used to just love (he said sarcastically) sitting in four-hour Oro Valley Town Council meetings where a long line of residents living in high-density subdivisions would line up out the door to protest a rezoning for the next high density subdivision. The gist of the hypocritical argument being “I’m here now, pull up the ladder.”
Moving people around the city and the state (and the eventual Presphoenixson megaopolis) is certainly something we should be planning for, but I think high speed rail is the cart before the horse. Metro Phoenix is 10,000 square miles. Metro Tucson is 4,000 square miles. You can’t just want to move people between two dots on a map, they have to be able to easily get where they want to go in all those square miles or they won’t ride the train. Moreover, there are a lot of reasons for Tucsonans to want to go to Phoenix, the airport and baseball and football games being the primary ones. Why would Phoenicians want to come to Tucson? If the train is to succeed, the major population center – Phoenix – needs to have more reasons to ride it than the smaller cities and right now, there’s nothing that Tucson offers that Phoenicians can’t get in their own city. The reverse is not true for Tucson. Or Nogales.
May 24th, 2010 on 10:01 am
That is what they said about Livermore CA. Who the heck wants to go to Livermore? Well Bart goes from Palo Alto/Daly City through San Francisco under the bay through Oakland and stops in Livermore. The ridership was getting to work In San Francisco. It is obvious that Tucson will never bring business here so we need to get to the jobs in Phoenix.
If things keep going the way they are going, The Arizona Republic will be the only daily newspaper simply because they are the only ones that will have ad revenue to support it. The Star certainly isn’t going to grow or promote business growth in Tucson. Ad revenue has to come from somewhere.
May 24th, 2010 on 9:11 am
Mark is right about the numbers, but we could start the creation of the infrastrucure now. Our population will double.
May 24th, 2010 on 9:22 am
I know California is a dirty word right now, however, they do have a remarkable train system called BART. If and a big IF the Arizona and especially Tucson movers and shakers would look beyond themselves for 5 minutes maybe they could see the possiblility and probablility of such modernized transportation here in Tucson and Arizona. Our mass transportation is so out dated it is an embarrassment. Before you start jumping up and down I am a native of Tucson, however I have opened my eyes to other ideas and ways of doing things.
May 24th, 2010 on 9:51 am
I would prefer elevated monorail, but why stop at Phoenix? Take it all the way to Las Vegas or San Diego/LA. I know you think it is more expensive, but it doesn’t take fuel. The rail is powered one section at a time and their is so little upkeep cost. Look into the Seattle monorail system that was supposed to be temporary and is now making a profit.
May 24th, 2010 on 10:20 am
Hey Debbie: That Would be great. Elevated transit to ‘Vegas or beyond! I wonder what the cost per mile would be?
My favorite ‘elevated’ transit to Nevada used to be the weekly Friday night ‘Gamblers’ Special’ flights in an old DC-3 from Long Beach Airport back in the late 1950′s to the Lucky Dog Casino & Bawdy House, located in beautiful Hawthorne Nevada. $5 round trip, free beer included.
How could you go wrong? <g>
Things were going great until one snowy, foggy, winter weekend, when the ol’ Special failed to show back up at Long Beack on Saturday afternoon.
They finally found her a few months later, when the high Sierra snow pack had melted enough to see the tail sticking up out of the snow at about the 13,8000 foot level on the north face of Mt. Whitney, where she had augered in at 185 mph.
Thank God that I had to work that weekend.
Yer pal, Ferrari Bubba.
May 24th, 2010 on 11:24 am
Actually, it would make better sense to do Phoenix-Tucson-Las Cruces-El Paso. Metro Tucson is a million, ‘Cruces -El Paso is the same. Figure on about $35 million per mile, or the cost of our wars until the end of June ($10 billion).
May 24th, 2010 on 12:17 pm
Take it up to Flag and connect with east/west Amtrak over to Lamy and connect with the RailRunner. Or simply mimic the RailRunner between Santa Fe and south of Albuquerque. It’s neither new nor particularly innovative, which means it’s a whole lot cheaper than might be thought.
The truth is that we once had all these various routes and they filled a tremendous need. It’s been within the last twenty years that AZ was starved of any kind of useful rail service – the tracks are still there, the agreements are still there – but the highway builders won.
May 24th, 2010 on 4:56 pm
Arizona needs a high-speed rail system spanning from Nogales to Kingman with light-rail branch connections. However, it will not happen for some time. The major car dealerships won’t allow it and our legislators will not vote in favor of it. It will take the Federal Government to force it upon the state. Building more and wider freeways is not the answer to traffic congestion. Alternative public transportation that is environmentally-friendly is the best way to solve the traffic overflows and keep Arizona scenic.
June 4th, 2010 on 6:57 pm
It will be nice, to Phoenix or to San Diego. I will finally get a real job, this city Tucson is a dead town with old buildings everywhere and no jobs for College Graduated. Just sales jobs everywhere. It sucks
June 4th, 2010 on 8:00 pm
Hey Marissa: Great news for you young, frisky college grads! No Jobs, you say? Bah-humbug!
I hear that Raiders Reef and the rest of the Old Pueblo Gemtlemens Clubs are looking for a few recent ‘adventuresume’ young college grads who like to entertain lonely men.
Hours are flexible, and the tips are great too. It sounds like a win-win situation to me. It could be your first step to appearing on ‘Dancing With the Stars!’
Just trying to help, yer pal, Ferrari Bubba