Come join us! For residents of Arizona, or anywhere else, if you would like to show your pictures of light rail cars or of the fun places, businesses, housing, restaurants, hotel's, schools, entertainment etc along the 20 mile light rail route, we have just created a "Phoenix Light Rail" group on Flickr. Please join in and participate! I KNOW some of you have some great pictures to share!

In addition to the group, you can view all of Rail Life's pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/raillifepics/

Do you live near the line? Do you have a favorite restaurant on the light rail line? Are you a student that will be using light rail? Sports fans that can't wait to take the light rail trains to the games? Serious, the choices are endless. We will post links to the best ones from time to time right here on the blog. Hey, there's an idea; maybe a weekly link to our favorite pics?!? We want to help show some excitement for the changes coming to our communities.  So, click on THIS PHOENIX LIGHT RAIL GROUP to join in and share pics as you take them. If you already have some good pics, go ahead and add them..

Basic rules are.. Keep it clean, keep it relevant to life on the line. Have fun! We will be adding pictures regularly and hope you will too. Thanks for stopping by!

Recently, we talked about the public involvement meetings for the Northwest Extension. Soon, there be two more public meetings in Tempe to discuss the "Tempe South Study" where we will have an opportunity to learn more about future routes and transit modes to connect South Tempe and parts of Chandler to the upcoming 20 mile Light Rail "starter line." We have heard of a few different possibilities for the area that is bounded on the North and South by the 202 Freeways (Red Mountain and San Tan) and from the 101 Freeway on the East to the Union Pacific railroad tracks to the West. Studies have mentioned bus, rapid transit, light rail transit, modern streetcar and/or commuter rail. Some of the challenges have been the East/West running railroad tracks and having a light rail line cross them. (could be a disaster waiting to happen?) Others have been the fact that Mill kind of "dead-ends" at Baseline and would need to shift over to Kyrene. (again crossing the railroad tracks in that area) There has also been a mention of the lack of room along Rural to run mass transportation down that road. McClintock appears to have some promise but all have their own little quirks that will (hopefully) be discussed in more detail at these next meetings. To make sense of my poor explanation, check out this map..

Tempe has seen the growth of it's public transportation quadruple in the past decade. With the added convenience of Light rail running through the North part of the city, it would appear the growth in public transportation will continue. The existing bus lines will feed nicely in to the rail stops and there have been talks of creating more pedestrian and bicycle friendly paths near the light rail lines.

We will try to post a re-cap of information from the meetings but please feel free to come and participate. The schedules are as follows.

Tuesday, June 10, 6 – 8 p.m.
Tempe Public Library
3500 S. Rural Rd., Tempe

Wednesday, June 11, 6 – 8 p.m.
Corona del Sol High School
1001 E. Knox Rd., Tempe

If you have any questions or comments for Metro concernig this stuff, they can be directed to pcecere@metrolightrail.org. Or, feel free to leave a comment here on the blog. If we don't know the answer, we will be glad to look in to it for you and maybe even do a follow up article.