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Originally Posted by N830MH
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I was in Glendale yesterday for a meeting. Traveling through that city's small downtown on the way to Glendale Community College, I couldn't help but be reminded of how silly Glendale's thinking about light rail is. The initial proposal to build track through the Alhambra neighborhood of Phoenix and then to downtown Glendale makes sense, but the city council then wants two details that may undermine light rail:
First, it wants the track to travel down Glenn Drive (a local street) rather than Glendale Avenue (an arterial) within Downtown. Mesa considered doing something similar but wisely decided to keep light rail in a high-visibility location right on Main Street.
Second, it wants light rail to extend west of 59th Avenue so there is a future option to expand to Westgate. Right after the excitement of the NCAA Final Four, that sounds great. Nevertheless, events like that occur infrequently and may be less common once new mega-stadiums in Las Vegas and Los Angeles start competing for the same events. Most of the time, the trains will be running to a destination that is always a team relocation or players strike away from irrelevance. Running north on 59th Ave to destinations like Glendale Community College, which has 20,000 students, would make a lot more sense.
Of course, the current federal budget proposal, which is designed to eventually reduce federal transit funding to zero, might eliminate or delay this project anyway.