Happy holidays! We are so appreciative of your partnership over this year and the many years that light rail has been embedded in our community. Next week, Wednesday, December 27, is Valley Metro Rail’s 15th anniversary or birthday, having opened in Dec. 2008! My, how the years have flown by and it’s been amazing to see how our regional rail investment has paid dividends—to our thousands of daily riders, our three rail communities, our region’s economic activity and to the workforce who we connect and who makes the service possible every day.
If you’re so inclined, please add this date to your social calendars and we encourage you to post celebrating this milestone! Static post, video or reel—thank you for celebrating with us. Below are a few fun talking points and attached a few images—a few oldies (from our opening day) to more current. If you need, you can also find many more images within our Flickr albums and video b-roll footage on our YouTube page.
- Valley Metro Rail serves 35,000 riders each weekday—34M total boardings across FY23.
- Connects thousands to work and school with 50% of all trips taken being bound for these destinations.
- Generates significant return on investment with more than $17B in economic development within a half-mile of the light rail corridor.
- Across the last 15 years:
- Valley Metro Rail has provided more than 191,630,000 rides (which could fill up State Farm Stadium 3,026 times).
- Light rail riders have traveled 1,341,410,000 miles since 2008 (which is equivalent to approximately 53,839 turns around the Earth).
- Light rail riders have saved 60,400,000 gallons of gas and offset more than 530,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
You must be logged in to post a comment.