While growing up in Pittsburgh and traveling extensively domestically and internationally public transportation was a given. During grad school I rode the bus and subway daily with my mum to town from the suburbs. When we moved to Phoenix, the paucity of public transportation surprised me. We have a bus system here, but it’s terrible. The Port Authority Transit (PAT) system in Pittsburgh rocked. The buses were on time and went everywhere we wanted to go. In Phoenix, I couldn’t even tell how bad the buses are. Several years ago now, we, Arizona residents, voted in a proposition to raise money for a light rail system (think subways or trolleys above ground). The light rail system opened at the beginning of this month.

Claire and I decided we to take the light rail into Phoenix to go to the downtown farmer’s market Saturday. She’d never been on public transportation (other than the airport shuttle), so it was fun for both of us. We packed our belongings and headed out. The light rail was packed because it’s such a novelty right now, but we found seats.

I think I expected the light rail to move quicker, as it took an hour to get from Apache & 101 to Central Avenue. Along the way there were a ton of cool places to go back to, including restaurants and bars I’ve never seen. The train also passed the AZ Science Center (to where we have a membership!), Chase Field and America West Arena. It also passed two cool breakfast places and then headed up Central Ave towards my destination. There’s a lot of new businesses cropping up along the route, and I expect even more within a year or so.

We’d gotten moving after morning gymnastics, so it was a little later than I’d hoped. As we walked up to the market, a man was pulling down the welcome sign. I glanced down at my watch and saw it was 12:59. I sure wish I’d seen that it closed at 1pm! We moved quickly around and picked up a couple things as they closed up shop. Claire bought some honey, and I bought a carton of dates. We walked down Central just to check out what was around. We came upon Central Station and hopped the train home. Claire slept most of the way home, and I enjoyed the trip but knew if I’d just driven up then it would’ve been way quicker (think about it, I could’ve driven to Payson and back). For commuters, the train’s great because you’re not sitting in rush hour (time to sleep, read, listen to music, or work while someone else drives you to work downtown).