Scottsdale dismisses future light rail possibilities in transportation plan

PHOENIX — Scottsdale city leaders rejected light rail in its future in approving a master transportation plan this week.

The plan passed 5-2 in Tuesday’s vote with Councilwomen Virginia Korte and Linda Milhaven as the dissenters.

City documents show that Korte made a motion to remove the language in the plan preventing future consideration of a rail or street car and Milhaven seconded the motion, which did not go to a vote.

This comes three months after the council held a meeting about a former version of the plan that made references to and contained diagrams of three possible light-rail routes.

Throughout the meeting various council members presented reasons against the light rail, including that citizens had previously voted against it, that cost would be high and that the “millionaires who come here to Scottsdale didn’t come here to hop the rail.”

During the public comment period one resident read a letter by a woman who said that she was forced to close up and move shop after the light rail moved in by her store near Seventh and Highland avenues in Phoenix and brought crime and “vagrants” to the neighborhood.

Following the April meeting, Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane told the Republic that installing a light rail would be too costly and that the rapid development of technology like self-driving cars would soon outpace that of a light rail.