Sunday, December 28, 2008

90,000 Riders on First Day

Big day for the Phoenix opening.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow that says something when youre talking about the city that is the epitome of sprawl and the suburban lifestyle.

LRT is probably extremely attractive to all the transplants living in Phoenix who are there solely for the jobs and are urbanites at heart (or at least those who find sprawl unappealing). That was sort of how I viewed the Charlotte Lynx system and its development south of downtown. I can assure you if I lived in Phoenix or Charlotte I would live right on the LRT line.

Anonymous said...

This is awesome, the Phoenix Symphony composed a piece the 'March of the Metro' to commemorate the opening of the light rail system...

Composer Michael Daugherty talks about his process in composing the newly premiered "March of the Metro" - a work commissioned by Clem and Mary Jo Hellmann to commemorate the opening of Phoenix's brand new metro light rail system.

Phoenix Symphony: March of the Metro

Cant find a full length recording of the actual thing played at the stations, just a low quality midi file on their website.

njh said...

I really enjoyed reading the comments on the newspaper on the various articles about the new light rail. I gather that the 10 anti-rail-advocates were staying at home posting on the comments, whilst the 90000 advocates were out having fun.

Anonymous said...

My repsonse to Jon: Whoa! The Phoenix Symphony celebrates the opening of LRT! Whoa!!

And 90,000 riders on Day One!! I knew it could come to this! Tell Wendell Cox and Randal O'Toole that they're wrong! (It may not be for long, though.)

Response to njh: What were the "10 anti-rail-advocates" and their comments like? I imagine it would be more of the same crap.

njh said...

Matt, their arguing technique appears to be 'repeat 5 unsupported claims until the opposition gets bored'. I didn't really read them all, just a random sampling.

cosmoflanker said...

I just took a ride from Central/Roosevelt to 44th Street and back. Rides are still free today (and through Wednesday night) - trains are as packed as they were on the weekend (I rode Saturday morning too). Everyone onboard in a good mood. Some people are just riding, some are actually using it to go someplace (lunch, for example). I myself am still looking for the people who said they "could walk faster than the train will go." I haven't seen anyone walking faster than the train yet.

Anonymous said...

I gather that the 10 anti-rail-advocates were staying at home posting on the comments, whilst the 90000 advocates were out having fun.

it was probably just jim karlock and his 9 other fictious names posting all the comments and refering to his own website of cooked up data.

i'm sure they'll use the expected decrease in riders between this abnormally-high opening weekend ridership and when normal with-fare operation begins in a week from now, as a way of saying the system has a downward ridership trend.