Recently, I came across this Metro Light Rail description at Wikipedia and I found a lot of good information. Unfortunately, most of the information is already public knowledge. Thinking of this stuff reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a Metro employee. You see, I often wonder why there is not one great place to find out about many of the real benefits light rail will bring to the valley. Many people, travelers, business owners and students will benefit from the new system but with so many organizations to deal with, it seems like no one has done a great job of educating the public as to what is possible with light rail.

From what I can tell, Metro doesn't have a huge budget for marketing, the City of Phoenix and the cities of Tempe and Mesa don't have a huge budgets specific to rail, business owners can't do it alone, the Department of Tourism can't just focus on rail benefits and leave out other communities, the Convention Center has many other things to market etc. etc..

Looking at each, I might think that..

Metro was given a lot of money for the construction. For them to ask for more money to market the complete benefits and surroundings might not go over well with some of the people that are against the project. Also, this isn't what they were hired for.

The City of Phoenix has made an attempt at promoting the line but it appears they have very limited resources available.

Tempe and Mesa, like Phoenix, should benefit from new development but obviously have challenges to promote the rail project effectively due to many other obligations , red tape etc.

For the Department of Tourism, business owners, the convention center etc to all promote the line as a whole and as a true asset to the state, it becomes challenging, at best. Each city, department, business owner is probably willing to promote themselves but isn't as likely to promote others involved. Selfish? Probably not. Economics? Maybe.

Seems to me that most people don't yet realize the multitude of benefits for the areas surrounding the light rail line. Having a resource to find a huge list of things to do, see, enjoy, spend money on and to use as a complete guide to life surrounding the light rail line sounds like a pretty good idea to me.. What do you think?