By Adam Gaub | Casa Grande Dispatch
The number of options for a high-speed rail line connecting Phoenix to Tucson has been whittled to three, and the route that would have come through Maricopa is not among them.
Officials with the Arizona Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that three routes were chosen as the final options to be studied, weeding out a route that would have come through the Gila River Indian Community through Maricopa, before heading east for Casa
Grande.
That route, ADOT Rail Planner Carlos Lopez told the Maricopa City Council in April, has a number of issues with it that ultimately made it less desirable than the three options still on the table.
“The project team has been in discussions with Gila River, and in regards to a rail system, the rail system would need additional right of way,” Lopez said. “It would not be able to be within the existing I-10 right of way.”
Mayor Christian Price expressed concern at that meeting that the Gila River Indian
Community would not want to have a new rail line cut through their land.
On the table, however, remains an option that would see the rail line run in tandem with Interstate 10 for essentially the entire route. The other two options — dubbed the orange and yellow lines — follow a path east of the Gila River Indian Community. The orange line falls in the planning area for the north-south freeway corridor, while the yellow line tracks for part of the route along the Union Pacific Railroad north of Eloy.
All three routes are slated to run along I-10 south of Eloy to their final destination at Tucson International Airport.
