On November 28th, Building a Better Phoenix – a coalition of South Phoenix residents and small business owners – turned in over 40,000 signatures to put Phoenix’s continued light rail expansion on the ballot and let voters decide whether to continue spending billions of dollars laying overpriced track, or use those monies to rebuild our streets and bridges, increase bus service, and improve pedestrian access. But while the initiative seeks to end all expansion, the real aim of the South Phoenix coalition behind the effort is to stop the expansion along S. Central Ave where many of them live, work, and run their family businesses. Predictably, the City of Phoenix is doing everything possible to thwart their aims.
If the City had moved ahead expeditiously with validation of the petitions, the initiative could have gone in front of voters as early as May 21, 2019, when it is likely that one or more Council seats will also be decided in runoff elections to replace current the current Mayoral candidates Kate Gallego and Danny Valenzuela. Instead, the City is using every last second of the statutorily allowed time, even taking a full month before even beginning the verification process, to ensure that whatever else happens these citizens activists who have given their blood, sweat, and precious resources won’t have their Christmas wishes granted. Because while Phoenix is slow rolling validation of the petition to stop the train, they also appear to be scheming with Valley Metro to fast forward the construction timeline on S. Central as much as they possibly can. They are absolutely determined to ignore the will of voters if there is any chance those voters might stop their precious boondoggle.
The residents of South Phoenix who banded together to oppose the light rail aren’t doing it because they don’t want good transportation options. They do. But they also know that the result of light rail expansion both here in Phoenix and across the Country is absolutely clear and consistent: the destruction of minority communities and shuttering of legacy business. In its wake light rail brings one of two things: gentrification, or empty blight. No small, local business can withstand the 2-3 years of total disruption light rail entails. They go out of business or, if they can afford it, are forced to relocate. The same happens with affordable housing as tenants flee the 24-hour noise, dust, diesel fumes, and traffic bottlenecks. In their wake come the only businesses with the capital to survive years of carrying costs on unproductive real estate: high end condo and retail developers – or bank foreclosures.
That’s not alarmism, it is the absolute reality of light rail expansion both here and elsewhere. Look at the line running East of downtown on Washington. In the City core it’s brought massive development of high-end retail and housing, but outside the core? Unless you count homeless encampments as development, nada. Light rail also brings increased crime, vandalism, and vagrancy – all while bottlenecking traffic and making it tougher for first responders to reach thescene of an emergency.
Further, the vast majority of our population will never use light rail. Right now, light rail is accessible to 1% of the people in Phoenix. If their plans are fully realized, light rail will eventually serve 3% of our population. While taking 30% of our transit dollars. That isn’t fair or reasonable, but the politicians don’t care, because they have billions of reasons not to. A whole lot of insiders are getting rich building the light rail. Already, costs for the existing lines have run almost 50% over budget. Each new mile of track costs in excess of $150 million to build, and another $3 million a year to maintain. In the end, those are billions of dollars are going from you, the public, to City insiders. And the insiders aren’t about to let anyone stop lining their pockets with your money, least of all a bunch of poor upstarts from South Phoenix.