urbanMSP

There's a push in the city of Phoenix for an "all of the above" transportation investment. Information here: http://movephx.org/

It would be a 0.7% sales and use tax to fund
- street repaving (680 miles)
- 33 year maintenance cycle for road repairs
- New roads & bridges (up to $240 million, I assume this means over a ~30 year time horizon?)
- New LRT lines
- Bike infrastructure
- New BRT lines
- Improved bus frequency
- Some other stuff

Obviously, it hasn't passed yet. Phoenix is about 500 square miles with ~1.5 million residents. Compare that to Hennepin County, with 600 square miles and 1.2 million people. I estimated that Hennepin & Ramsey combined would generate about $230m per year at 0.75%. So this plan would seem to focus most of the money generated on transit/bike/ped/maintenance. I'm interested to see if it passes.

Prop 104 passed I believe.

You are correct:

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/loc ... /32283455/

Looks like there proposal was actually to increase the current tax from 0.4% (expiring in 2020) to 0.7%, so not a huge jump. Also,

More than half of the Prop. 104 plan’s funding will go to maintaining and improving bus service throughout the city. Less than a third will pay for running current light rail service and building new routes.
About 7 percent will fund street improvements such as repaving roads, constructing new streets and adding sidewalks and bike lanes. The last 10 percent will pay for debt service and an operating reserve.

I have to believe if we went to the state legislature and asked for a transit tax put to vote it would pass in the core counties.

Wow. I'd be a supporter of something similar here if it only guaranteed $240 million for new roads over a 30 year horizon ($8 million, or roughly one standard suburban freeway interchange, a year). That's relatively close to #nonewroads as we can get.

I'd guess they'd be looking for $240 million a year.

I will take any Phoenix/Scottsdale-area recommendations that folks have. Hikes, parks, scenic lookouts, day trips, good tacos, booze, etc. I've got 4 days there coming up, one of which will be spent on a day trip to the Grand Canyon south rim.

Taliesin West has great tours.

Arcosanti is worth a stop. Utopia, almost.

Don't sleep on Flagstaff, cool little town.

And I'd recommend taking Highway 89 between Sedona and Flagstaff instead of the interstate.

Lost Dutchman State Park is pretty cool. There is a ghost town recreation really close to there also.

If you have time, Tucson has a lot of great hiking, such as Sugrao National Park, Mt. Lemon and Sabino Canyon.

Go to the Desert Botanical Garden.

Lotta good hikes around Phoenix, Piestewa Peak is probably the one I'd recommend, since it's relatively centrally located and not especially strenuous, but gets you up high enough to have good views.

Its about a 2 hour drive but sedona is amazing

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions. I had not heard of Arcosanti until now

It's interesting to hear positive takes on Phoenix here. I'm not among the hardline urbanists on this forum, but I found Phoenix to be the definition of a car sewer and a city lacking of culture. Everywhere you look it's a six-lane road and a chain store.

It's interesting to hear positive takes on Phoenix here. I'm not among the hardline urbanists on this forum, but I found Phoenix to be the definition of a car sewer and a city lacking of culture. Everywhere you look it's a six-lane road and a chain store.

Most of the recommendations are outside of Phoenix. I agree with you that the built up area of Phoenix metro is one of the most depressing places I have ever been.

This project looks amazing. I would love to see something like this go in at the Blue Line Terminus near the Target North Campus. There is so much land south of 109th near US-169 that could add to the ridership of the Blue Line if it is developed in a walkable manner. (And maybe even extend the Blue Line one more station to 109th)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nWD65PI_i0