Preparing to go carless: Valley Metro resources

When I was 18 years old, my parents got me driving lessons from a slightly sketchy but very cool driving instructor who taught me “defensive driving”. It turns out my initial instincts about my driving ability were spot on: the instructor said I would be OK, but that driving sure didn’t come naturally to me. 

Boy, was he right. I always hit the curb when parking and have a tendency to bump stationary objects. Within a week of purchasing my first grown-up car after graduating college, a 2008 Dodge Stratus, I had scraped all four sides of it while attempting to successfully turn into my apartment's one-car garage.

Still, especially as a print reporter in rural Nevada, and later at newspaper 50 miles away from my home in Arizona, there was no getting around driving.

The day it occurred to me that now I work from home and most of our regular haunts are 5 miles (or less!) away, I felt like I’d had the kind of epiphany that changes the course of mankind. Maybe, just maybe, I no longer had to drive. That’s where the discussions about going carless first began in earnest. Then when our student loans came due and we realized we could have a car and be broke all the time or not have a car and buy, you know, groceries…well, here we are.

Still, beneath the initial relief the thought of not driving gave me, I still had some trepidation.

I hadn’t relied on public transport since I was a teenager in Las Vegas, Nevada, my hometown, over 20 years ago. Even then I only rode two lines for the most part (Rainbow and Flamingo, for my fellow Las Vegans out there, and the occasional jaunt down Desert Inn to get over the overpass and into Paradise).

Sure, Judd and I generally park and rode the light rail to baseball games or events in downtown Phoenix, but I hadn’t ridden a bus too often. So it felt like an unknown and, like all unknowns, a bit scary. 

With the exception of syringes, because they make me pass out cold, my general response to being frightened of something is to immerse myself in it, whether through exposure or research. I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do psychologically, but I can ride elevators now without clammy hands so it works at least sometimes (what is it with humanity and riding in metal containers that careen through space, seriously? Is this really the best we can do?). 

And so over the course of a couple of weeks I met my niggling nervousness about relying on the bus in the grand tradition of mildly compulsive, overly organized, neurotic folk: I over-researched every possible contingency and over-prepared for the transition. By the time I was done, I probably could’ve found a way to bus to the moon.

I discovered a number of apps and tools ValleyMetro had in place and thought I'd share how useful (or useless) I've found them. Despite these tools, the truth is I use Google Maps, set to the transit setting, about 98 percent of the time. For all of Valley Metro’s valiant attempts, they simply can’t beat the user-friendly, quick, real-time updated razzle-dazzle of Google (sorry, Valley Metro). 

Still, these other features are worth knowing about, mostly. I did learn the hard way recently Google Maps does not update bus schedules to reflect holiday schedules, which are basically weekend schedules on a weekday.

So at the very least, these tools are good to have around as a backup.

The Valley Metro Ridekick app

What it is: The City of Phoenix’s bus and light rail trip planner

Operation: User-friendly for the most part but with serious flaws

Usefulness: I hardly ever use this (reasons below)

The Valley Metro Ridekick app is basically a trip planner and metro map. It tells you where you can buy transit passes and where bus and light rail stops are. It will also plan your trip for you.

For the most part, the interface is user-friendly, even if you aren’t tech savvy. But it has some pretty serious flaws that make me turn to, you guessed it, Google Maps instead.

First, you can only enter most bus stops by cross streets, which is fine if you already know you’re going from 48^th Street and Thomas Road to 52^nd Street and Thomas Road. But if all you know is the location you need to get to, and you’re not familiar with bus stop locations in that area, you have to rely on the app’s map.

This probably is not a big deal to most people, my husband included. But for people like me who simply can not read a map, no matter how hard we try to make that damn grid somehow relate to the three-dimensional world in which are standing, this is tedious.

In all fairness, some flagship transit stops like the Phoenix Art Museum, the Herberger Theater and the Burton Bar Central Library (currently closed due to that tragic snapped water pipe) are locatable by name.

But the inability to put in business locations like Planet Fitness or even general search terms like “Target on 44^th Street” can make planning a trip more complicated than need be.

You can get a detailed view of your trips that is similar to Google Maps, telling you how far and where you need to walk, etc. 

But I advise using caution if you need a transit pass and calling ahead to the location first as, unfortunately, the app may not be accurate.  








When I first started my carless journey I went to the adorable Saguaro Library to get my first transit pass. It turned out they didn’t sell passes, which was frustrating.

Some credit is due to Valley Metro here, however. I Facebook Messenger’ed them through their official Facebook page and they responded within a few business days. Unfortunately, instead of giving the library passes to sell, they just removed the library from the list of places that sold passes. This is a bit baffling because the librarian said they constantly receive requests for passes. It’s a great, highly accessible location and right near a bus stop, too. Sigh. 

The NextRide text-messaging service

What it is: NextRide is an automated text messaging system that allows you to text the bus or light rail stop number you are at and receive a text with the real-time, updated time at which the next bus or light rail will arrive. That means even if the bus is late (or will be early), you can rely on the time that is texted to you. 

Operation: Super easy, especially if you program the number into your phone.

Usefulness: I do use this, and it is helpful, particularly on holidays when Google Transit does not update the bus routes to holiday schedules. 

NextRide is a great system and I’m pleasantly surprised at the city’s ability to keep the signs that have the bus stop numbers on them clean and free of graffiti. Response texts come back immediately and, in my experience, are always accurate, even if the bus has been delayed or running early.

My eTransit Book

What it is: A customizable e-transit book you can create and download onto your phone or computer. It’s basically a schedule book with only the routes and transports you choose.

Operation: Really easy to set up and auto-formats into a PDF

Usefulness: I created one but have yet to really use it. In fact, I haven’t downloaded it onto my phone yet!

My eTrasit Book

My transit Book is good for people who want to look up transit times the old-fashioned way, on a table, without sorting through time tables and information that are not relevant for them. Although ValleyMetro is leaning hard on the e-aspect of it, and the ability to save ink and paper, if you need to you can print it out and carry it with you.

I haven’t really used mine yet, though I found the process to make it surprisingly simple.