My light rail test with Channel 15

Back on January 26th, Lori Jane Gliha from channel 15 news came to our house with a camera man to talk to me about our new light rail system. Once there, she met my wife and two of our children and was quickly run circles around by our twin 3 year old boys who thought it was fun to say "cheese" for the camera. ( it was kind of funny ) While I originally thought Lori Jane was there to talk to me about RailLife, my wife and kids quickly got to steal the show by answering several questions and talking on camera for a while.

Turns out, abc 15 wanted to do a story about the light rail titled: "Putting Light Rail to the test: Is a car more efficient?" The idea was for me to go about a "normal" day riding the light rail to a destination of choice along the route. For those of you that know me, it's no secret that I don't have many "normal" days. 🙂 We chose a place along Mill which really isn't very far from my home but it seemed like a decent choice. The camera guy rode in my car while Lori Jane drove to Mill. As we drove to the park and ride station at McClintock and Apache, I was filmed while driving and the entire time it took to get from my home to Mill Avenue. You should have seen the looks I got when boarding the train! It was hilarious! As I boarded a semi-full light rail car, people looked at me and wondered (some out loud) who the heck was this guy with a news camera following him around. One of the ladies I sat next to couldn't help herself but to say; "Who are you?" Before you knew it, I was talking to a bunch of people on the car and explaining , as best I could, what the heck we were doing.

Once we arrived at Mill Avenue, I walked a couple of blocks south and met up with Lori Jane again where she seemed surprised that I had arrived so quickly. I kind of had the feeling they didn't look at the light rail as making much sense for most trips but I think we were all pleasantly surprised at the overall effectiveness of the system. We talked for several minutes about my experiences with RailLife.com and about what I thought about many aspects of the system. Overall, we were together for approximately 2 hours and, as you can see from this video, they used a pretty small amount of footage. It really is interesting to see how much work they put in to a 3 minute video. Much of the video is with my good friend, Rich Large of Mesa. Lori Jane asked if I knew of anyone that commuted via light rail so we called Rich to set up a time for them to meet that night after work. Rich and I have talked about the light rail and of the LINK system in the past, it was fun to see him on tv as well.

Thanks to abc 15 for taking the time to talk to me after "finding me on line." I had a lot of fun and my mom got a kick out of seeing me on tv.