AZ Central’s Light Rail Deception

Arizona Central (Arizona Republic) is repeatedly claiming that “Phoenix voters have approved light rail 3 times.” This statement is very misleading because light rail has never been sufficiently popular to gain the support of Phoenix voters on its own. The last big tax increase is a good example. The instigators of this tax increase proposed it for the sole reason of paying for light rail. However, they were not stupid. They knew that support for light rail is very thin (because light rail is wasteful, inefficient, polluting, congestion causing, expensive, inappropriate in our age of autonomous vehicles, etc, etc). Therefore, they tried to give every Phoenix voter something to support. They threw in road repair, buses, bike lanes, walkways, and anything else they could think of to get enough votes to pass the measure. Near the end of the process they even threw in $16 million for police, just to be sure they got something for everyone.

A standalone vote for light rail never would have passed. Therefore, to suggest that voters have “approved light rail 3 times” is playing Pinocchio.