Moving to Mesa AZ?

Question

A friend of mine who does not drive is moving to Mesa. How is she going to get around and to her new job? I have never been there before. I want to paint a realistic picture for her.

Answer 1

Hello Chocolate...she has to have a car to get around Phoenix/Mesa. I lived there for a few years (pretty nice city) but very spread out and you simply can not count on taking the bus everywhere for a couple of reasons. First, because the city IS so spread out it can take a couple of hours by bus to get around town sometimes. Second, the buses are often late. Fortunately, the city does have a pretty good bus system (they are newer buses) but there are many areas of the city that are not readily served by the existing bus routes.

If your friend is simply going to stay in and around Mesa, then she would be okay using the buses, but I assume that she will want to get out and around the Metro area and in that case, she's going to need a car.

Also, Phoenix (as you probably know) is brutally hot in the summer - hotter than any other large city in America. If you have a nice air-conditioned car, then you hardly even notice how hot it is. You leave your air-conditioned house or apartment and get into your air-conditioned car and drive to your air-conditioned office and it just seems like another nice sunny day in Phoenix! But if you have to wait for a bus and then walk from a bus stop to your office, it only takes a few minutes to get covered in sweat! Phoenix is very uncomfortable without I car, I would imagine.

Answer 2

There are public busses. There are also carpools and ride sharing programs. Phoenix is very spread out, so she should look for housing near a bus line. A lot of people ride bikes too.

Answer 3

Public Transportation in AZ is terrible. She'll need a car.

Answer 4

Well,they wont let us use wagon trains anymore so we have what ya'all call busses,and we have taxi's and then there are the carpool lanes,and there is tons of work here.