Photos by Mark Peterman “I wanted to leave on a successful note, and I told them they needed someone for the long-term.” — Rick Simonetta

Rick Simonetta was instrumental in getting the Valley its first light rail. Now that things are finally moving, why is he leaving?

It’s past 11 p.m. on a chilly December night in Downtown Phoenix, and the monthly First Friday celebration is winding down. Scores of mostly 20- and 30-somethings are shuffling a few blocks toward something that many never thought they’d see in the Valley, particularly if they grew up here. Instead of walking to their cars, dozens if not hundreds of people are waiting at the METRO Light Rail stop at Roosevelt Street and Central Avenue. The ASU students returning to Tempe or the young couple riding along Central Avenue for a nightcap probably have never heard of Rick Simonetta, but they know his work.

Simonetta is now the former CEO of METRO, the group that designed and built the 20-mile light rail system that connects Mesa, Tempe and Phoenix.

Be it politician, business executive or any other type of civic leader, few people leave a mark on a city like Simonetta. For more than 35 years he’s been helping to build mass-transit rail systems around the country.

Now, after six years in the Valley, he’s moved on to take a new position in Columbus, Ohio, as vice president and national director of High Speed Rail for URS Corporation, one of the country’s biggest transportation consultants.

There’s no denying he was a linchpin in the success of the controversial light rail.

“This is a system that people are using, and it’s great to see all the uses that are occurring. It’s not just a commuter system,” Simonetta said from his nearly bare office in Downtown Phoenix just days before heading to Ohio last December. “I wanted to leave on a successful note, and I told them they needed someone for the long-term.”

Long-term isn’t Simonetta’s style. His career in mass transit took him from Pittsburgh to Denver, Columbus, Atlanta and Philadelphia before reaching Phoenix. Over time he grew to become one of the most respected mass transit minds in the country.

“He was the right guy at the right time for light rail in the Valley,” says Alan Wulkan, a transit leader in his own right and managing partner at Scottsdale’s Infraconsult. Simonetta worked for Wulkan for a time, and the two have grown close as friends over 20-plus years in the same industry. “We’re all definitely going to miss him, but we were very fortunate to have him when we did,” Wulkan says.

The METRO light rail board of directors on December 9 named Stephen Banta to replace Simonetta. Banta was the executive director of operations for TriMet, the transit authority for the Portland area.

Simonetta’s first day on the job at Metro was January 1, 2004. That also happened to be Mayor Phil Gordon’s first day. The outgoing mayor, Skip Rimza, had a plan to open the light rail system in three phases, but Simonetta soon realized that would have to change and the budget would have to grow from $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion.

“I had to tell the new mayor that the old plan wasn’t right,” he remembers. “I gave him my proposal to finish the whole project by the end of 2008, and I put my credibility behind it.”

“He was the right guy at the right time for light rail in the Valley.” — Alan Wulkan, Infraconsult

Flash forward to December 2008, and that’s exactly what happened. The system opened on time and on budget. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone working with Simonetta.

“He ran a tight organization,” says METRO Chairman and Phoenix Vice Mayor Tom Simplot. “We heard ‘On time, on budget,’ ad nauseum, but it was important for everyone to keep hearing that.”

Simonetta enjoyed a successful first year for the light rail in 2009, with ridership numbers easily beating projections (ridership hit its peak in October with 1.12 million passengers for the month). But looking back, the 63-year-old says it was far from a smooth ride when construction was starting.

“Opposition happens at first with every city that builds light rail. I spoke at groups all over the Valley at first. In the East Valley in my first year they were brutal. Why, they wanted to know, do we need this ‘trolley car’ system.

“I didn’t have much back then to counter their arguments, but a few years later the questions shifted from ‘why’ to ‘how.’ They became a lot more interested in how to use it. And then the naysayers are all gone once it opens.”

Simplot says he remembers some rocky times with Simonetta as they and others tried to help severely struggling businesses along the light rail route. Construction delays mainly due to utility work and property acquisitions created bad press for METRO and put some mom-and-pop shops out of business.

“We were in the trenches together,” Simplot says. “Construction was a really stressful time for everybody, and for the mom-and-pops faced with the possibility of closure, we struggled to find financial avenues to help them. There was just no one driving up and down Central Avenue. Rick was instrumental in creating programs to help those businesses.”

Wulkan calls Simonetta one of the most consistent people he knows, and that’s helped him in both his personal and professional life.

“I’ve played a lot of golf with him, and he never gets rattled,” Wulkan says. “He’s very good at keeping things in perspective, and he’s always been able to manage a commitment to his family with a commitment to his career.”

Now with his Phoenix days behind him, the former Metro boss is looking to the future of mass transit. He hopes his work with URS will make a long-discussed high-speed rail system in California a reality.

Both in Arizona and elsewhere in the United States, Simonetta says he’s starting to see a shift in attitudes toward mass transit. Many of the old, negative clichés are going out the window as more people move to urban areas.

“People are not content living 30 or 40 miles away from their jobs,” he says. “The Boomers don’t want that anymore, and the younger generations think it’s cool to use public transit.”

From the looks of the standing-room-only light rail cars on First Friday, Simonetta’s right. Now he’s off to prove it again.