The first week of service for our new light rail line went pretty well. Of course not everything was perfect, but I do think it has been a success so far. This past Thursday was the very first day of paid service for the new METRO Light Rail line in Phoenix, and it too had it's minor challenges. That afternoon I took the photo below at a Tempe light rail stop, where a fare box was already out of service. I am not sure what the problem was, but I did notice the box next to it wasn't displaying all of the choices correctly. I decided to check the boxes at the opposite end of the platform and they appeared to be working without any problems at all.
After boarding the train, I headed to Phoenix where I noticed a Metro crew working on a box at Central and Campbell. It was good to see that they had taken immediate action to get the repairs handled right away. In fact, when I returned to the Tempe station all of the boxes were working correctly.
In addition to these "minor" issues, there have been issues with accidents and the timing of the trains. As with any project of this size, one would expect some "growing pains" and some adjustments to be made. The technology that is in place to monitor the cars, platforms and tracks looks to be quite impressive. We will try to watch the progress and write about it some more in the future.
Just a quick note here: I stumbled across this site and wanted to say hi.
I rode the [i]first[/i] ‘public’ train heading westbound out of Mesa a week ago Saturday picking it up in Tempe.
The crowding @ Christown was a bit much so I hoofed it down to Camelback and rode back home……….standiag all the way.
Bear,
Thanks for stopping by!