The actual time it takes to travel the 20-mile line is exactly 67 minutes, which you can verify on their current website. This is equal to an average speed of 17.9 miles per hours. This is fine when I need to go somewhere within a few miles. However, this speed is inadequate for the distances people commonly travel. I have taken the train the full 20 miles and it was exhausting.

The future light rails lines (with the exception of the one on I-10) will also run on the surface streets so they will be just as slow. At this rate, it could easily take commuters two hours to get to work on the light rail (if they are lucky enough to live and work on a line).

The sprawling city of Phoenix is building a sprawling network of light rail lines that will not be used by the majority of the population. They need to be investigating more light rail lines that will be separated from traffic so that they can move at freeway speeds.

Mesa has a population of 460,000 over 133 square miles, and has ONE mile of LRT that doesn’t even go to its moribund downtown. Portland actually approaches metro-wide LRT service with the Blue Line crossing the whole area.

Other differences include system track miles, how long the system has been open, how well the local bus system is, how well downtown does TODAY, shopping and living opportunities along the line, mentalities, city form and scale…Phoenix loses automatically in all those categories.

But even after you take all the Phoenix system’s inherent misgivings holistically, we’re still doing fine: 1,600 a track mile beats Dallas, St Louis, Baltimore, and is twice the perennial loser San Jose. I could easily see extensions over time along with anticipated development pushing Phoenix’s system into the top 10.