Tempe, AZ – Hi, my name is Valerian Ramos. I grew up in the suburbs in Peoria, Arizona and I just graduated from ASU. While attending ASU, I discovered the development Culdesac and have lived there ever since the beginning. Culdesac is a small car-free residential area in Tempe that is located directly next to a light rail stop. It gives me easy access to ASU downtown Phoenix up to the Melrose District, and downtown Mesa.
During college is when I learned that people could get around Arizona without the use of a car. More importantly, I discovered a lot of these people actually enjoy it.
In college I also ended up getting a bike and started attending local small community bike rides, mostly held in downtown areas, which is how I met a lot of people. That combination of biking in transit has changed my life.
In Tempe, our transit service is relatively good for Arizona standards. We have some free transit buses but there are times that transit is not efficient. What takes me 20 minutes on bike would take more than 40 minutes on transit and 10 minutes by car. These are already substantially different, but it becomes even worse during a hot day.
I’ve been pretty lucky and have had overall positive experiences on transit here, but if I wanted to go to more rural areas like Jerome, Bisbee or Yuma, it is nearly impossible if not extremely inconvenient. And if I want to go out of state, I have to go either to the nearest Amtrak station, which is all the way in Maricopa or I have no reasonable choice but to take an airplane.
I would love it if we had more frequent transit service, especially because of the heat. During a sweltering hot day during the summer, waiting for a bus can feel like an eternity. It’s like sticking your head in an oven with our dry heat in Arizona.
We need more reliable and consistent transit service. Not only do we need to continue funding public transit, but dedicate funding for transit operations, so people like me can get where we need to go.