What it means
Valley Metro is the brand on the region’s buses, trains and bus shelters, and “the light rail” is its train. Locals say “the light rail” the way New Yorkers say “the subway,” with one difference: in Scottsdale they usually say it about somewhere else. The trains run through central Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa. They do not cross into Scottsdale, and the city has made that a policy rather than an accident.
You will hear the phrase in two kinds of sentences. The first is practical: “Take the Sky Train to the light rail and get off at Mill Avenue,” a fine way to reach a game at ASU or a night in Tempe. The second is political: “Scottsdale doesn’t want the light rail,” which has been true in one form or another at City Hall for most of the system’s life.
How Valley Metro fits into regional planning and the half-cent sales tax is in the regional transportation guide; how to move around Scottsdale without the train is in the getting-around guide. This page is about the words.
Where you’ll meet it
On the Sky Harbor Sky Train, whose 44th Street station is a light rail stop; on Route 72 buses along Scottsdale Road; at ASU in Tempe; and in Scottsdale’s General Plan debates, where rail is still the dividing line.
Where the word came from
Valley Metro is the child of a 1985 ballot. When Maricopa County voters passed the half-cent transportation sales tax that built the Loop 101, the measure also created a Regional Public Transportation Authority, which later adopted the Valley Metro name to pull the separate city bus systems under one brand. The name borrows the region’s own nickname, the Valley, which is why nobody outside Arizona can guess what it is.
The light rail came much later. The first segment opened on December 27, 2008, and roughly 90,000 people rode it that day, some waiting two and a half hours. Extensions followed: east along Main Street in Mesa, north up 19th Avenue, and in June 2025 south along Central Avenue, which split the system into an A Line and a B Line. Tempe added a 3-mile streetcar in 2022.
Scottsdale’s answer has been consistent. Scottsdale Road was once studied as a possible high-capacity transit corridor, and in April 2016 the council dropped potential light rail routes from consideration, citing cost and the effect on existing businesses. On June 8, 2021, adopting the General Plan 2035, the council voted 7-0 after rewriting the definition of multimodal transportation to “specifically exclude rail and modern streetcar.” Councilwoman Kathy Littlefield said the change was “very necessary” if the plan was to pass with the public. Voters ratified the plan that November. The planning director noted that a future council could change the language.
What it is not
The light rail is not the trolley, Scottsdale’s free city bus dressed as a streetcar. It is not the PHX Sky Train, the airport’s own automated people mover, which only meets the light rail at 44th Street. And Valley Metro is not the whole bus network: Scottsdale runs its own trolley, and Phoenix operates many routes under the shared brand.
The fine print
By the numbers, as of 2025: 38.5 miles of light rail, 54 light rail stations, 14 streetcar stops, and about 11.1 million annual riders, roughly 33,700 on an average weekday. The nearest stations to Old Town are in Tempe, at University Drive and Rural Road and at Veterans Way and College Avenue, both served by the Route 72 bus that runs north on Rural Road and Scottsdale Road. Scottsdale’s trolley connects with nine regional Valley Metro bus routes, per the city’s transit page, but not directly with the train.
The money is regional even though the tracks are not. Scottsdale shoppers pay the county half-cent transportation tax, first passed in 1985 and extended in 2004 and, as Prop 479, on November 5, 2024, through 2045, and part of that money funds transit across the region, light rail included.
The argument on both sides is about scale. Opponents say rail would change the character of Old Town and the Scottsdale Road corridor and cost too much for the riders it would carry; supporters say the city opted out of the region’s backbone and left visitors and workers in cars. The record holds the votes, not a verdict. For the planning mechanics see the General Plan guide and the lexicon entry on the General Plan.