Coalitions pushing us toward the future
Behind the scenes, economic and political interests are reorganizing, based on the belief that Arizona and the Southwest must make substantial — perhaps unprecedented — commitments to upgrading infrastructure if we are to compete for business and jobs in the coming decades.
These coalitions are expanding their boundaries. Growing larger.
Their immediate focus is on generating a popular groundswell for improvements in Arizona’s transportation systems.
And by immediate, they mean immediate. Much of the focus of these business and political coalitions is to spur the Legislature into taking action in 2014 on a package of transportation funding reforms.
“It’s coming to a crescendo,” said former Arizona Public Service Co. executive Martin Shultz, a longtime supporter of transportation initiatives.
Valley Forward, as just one example, is a business and quality-oflife advocacy group that has been active in the Valley for 43 years. Or was. This year, Valley Forward became Arizona Forward, reorienting its advocacy to include the entire metro Phoenix to metro Tucson corridor.
Last year, Gov. Jan Brewer convened a statewide transportationadvocacy group, the Arizona Transportation and Trade Corridor Alliance, to generate industry and political support for the proposed Interstate 11 between Phoenix and Las Vegas, as well as other transportation needs. Advocacy on behalf of an I-11 has crossed state boundaries: the Nevada and Arizona departments of transportation are jointly studying the project and promoting it to the feds.
Mesa Mayor Scott Smith put together a wide coalition of business interests, construction contractors and politicians in his iArizona initiative, which is studying a variety of ways to improve Arizona transportation. Smith’s goal is to take advantage of Arizona’s central location in the Southwest to recreate it as a transportation hub for Dallas, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Mexico.
There even is growing support for a three-county transportation board to include the interests of Pima, Pinal and Maricopa counties as one.
The motivation behind all these broadening alliances is simple enough. Neither the federal govern- ment nor the Legislature has demonstrated real interest in doing the hard work of analyzing Arizona’s transportation-infrastructure needs and taking the necessary steps to fix what ails it.
They are doing it because someone has to.