The emergence of the Intermountain West as a hotbed for progressive transportation initiatives continues. The latest example is Phoenix, where the new light-rail system is a big hit—bringing good news to a state facing a $1.5-billion budget deficit and some of the nation’s worst readings on economic recovery.

Even before the Phoenix start-up, the vast, multi-metro “Mountain Megas” of the Rockies boasted two of the nation’s most successful rail-transit efforts—FasTracks in Denver and Trax in Salt Lake City. Both systems represent bold and self-conscious efforts to move people, yes, but perhaps more importantly to retrofit the auto-scape through the urban therapy of transit-oriented development. Coastal sorts have been surprised.

And now comes Valley Metro in Phoenix, one of the most apparently unpromising locations for transit of all, and it’s working, though not quite the way transit does in, say, New York, Boston, or Washington. Every day, Valley Metro attracts some 33,000 riders—way above the 26,000 that were originally projected. But what’s especially interesting is the clientele. Unlike systems elsewhere, which are used principally by commuters, the 20 miles of rail in Phoenix running along the central spines of Phoenix and then through Tempe to Mesa are used largely by students shuttling between Arizona State University’s downtown and Tempe campuses, and people going to restaurants, bars, ball games, and cultural events downtown. Only 27 percent of the system’s riders use it for getting to work (compared to 60 percent elsewhere), which suggests that, for now at least, the Phoenix light rail will flourish as a sort of jitney service supporting a post-industrial metropolis’s ongoing cultivation of a classic entertainment district downtown, higher education there and in Tempe, and associated nodes of new and intensified development along Central Avenue.