Radiate Phoenix, the downtown non-traditional networking group, held their May meeting last night at Switch on Central. The topic for the meeting was the Valley Metro Light Rail system.
Approximately 50 people gathered in the lounge area at 5:30 to discuss the past, present and future of the light rail system. As is usual, new and old friends chatted a bit, caught up on life/business and discussed the latest news effecting the downtown region.
Radiate co-founder, Claudia Bullmore of Sky Marketing, led the formal meeting. Attendees were asked to introduce themselves and talk about their personal light rail usage. Next, we were introduced to our two speakers for the evening... Nick Bastian, Raillife.com founder and Marty McNeil, MarCom director for Metro Light Rail.
Marty McNeil opened the discussion and described light rail as a trans-formative tool for the Valley linking people, development and future possibilities. She went on to describe the biggest lesson learned so far is that the system is far more popular than their optimistic predictions. McNeil said, "We felt the system would exceed our guarantees to the Federal Government by about 25%, but the actual numbers are over 45%."
Next, Nick Bastian talked about his involvement. A couple years ago he started his quest to better understand how and why a light rail system could/would be used. "There wasn't much out there" he said. Thus, RailLife.com was created to explore and discuss life on the Light Rail. Today, RailLife.com offers visitors a plethora of information about happenings, dining, shopping and social events along the light rail system. As Nick says, "The Light Rail is like a 4th city within 3 others."
The conversation moved to an interactive format with attendees offering thoughts and questions. I particularly enjoyed Nancy Levinson's comments. Nancy is the director of PURL, an architect, urban planner and darn fine thinker. Nancy said, "We spend too much on an outdated transportation system (freeways) rather than the system of the future (mass transit such as light rail.)
Too much else was discussed to include in this brief post... a good reason to attend for yourself. All in all it was another great event bringing people, ideas and information together in a social mix. Thanks to Claudia Bullmore, the gang at DPJ and Switch for making this happen.
Gene Urban
The Urban Team at Realty Executives
602-234-5777
Follow us @geneurban