Tempe Town Lake is a reservoir behind a dam on the Salt River. This is not a reservoir and dam made for electricity or irrigation purposes.
The Tempe Town Lake was designed for recreational purposes, and was the vision of a man named James Elmore who was a Dean at Arizona State University.
Elmore thought such a lake would be a huge boon to the university and to Tempe, which is where ASU is located.
When I first saw the downtown Tempe zone and its lake and lakefront development, back in 2012 I wondered if seeing such was one of the things lamebrains from Fort Worth had seen which they then tried to copy in the embarrassment which is currently coming off the rails, known as the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision, or America's Biggest Boondoggle.
The parallels between the Rio Salado Project and the failed Trinity River Vision are interesting, including ground breaking ceremonies, fake islands and bridges. Read the Wikipedia Tempe Town Lake article yourself and see how many parallels you can spot, and examples of things Tempe did that Fort Worth did not do, but should have. Such as environmental studies of water quality.
The two town's project may have some similarities in conception, but not in actualization, what with Tempe succeeding and Fort Worth failing.
In Tempe multiple analyses and studies were conducted in order to assure the validity and worth of the Rio Salado Project before construction began, was fully funded, and overseen by qualified adults, not a local congresswoman's inept son. And Tempe dropped the fake islands part of the plan, but managed to build multiple bridges serving multiple purposes. Long bridges, some actually built over water, such as the pedestrian bridge Miss Daisy rolled across today.
Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision is now falling apart because of the failure to do proper analysis of the project. That and bizarre revelations of emails between J.D. Granger and his mother Kay which have given those paying attention their first real clue as to why Fort Worth has been unable to build three simple little bridges over dry land. In four years.
Anyway, continuing with today Driving Miss Daisy fun.
Above you see Big Ed is taking a turn Driving Miss Daisy. At this location we are about midway across the lake. That is downtown Tempe you see in the distance, along with another of the Tempe Town Lake bridges. That one being the bridge the Metro light rail uses to cross the lake.
When Miss Daisy and I drove around Scottsdale and Tempe earlier in the year we were amazed at the number of bikes we saw of the bike share type. Dozens upon dozens of parked bikes at various locations. This time we saw few bikes. Instead it was an astounding number of scooters we saw people scooting about on, including multiple scooters scooting past us, or towards us on the bridge.
Looking closer at the scooters we could see usage was activated by pointing a phone app at a code reader on the scooter's handlebar. Scooting on these devices looks fun. And they move fast. Where are the re-charging stations we wondered? How are the scooters collected and returned to the charging stations? Maybe they are solar powered and require no charging.
Below is video I YouTubed of Driving Miss Daisy Across Tempe Town Lake. It was windy, and so my pithy commentary is impossible to hear most of the time, although the dig at inept Fort Worth came out plenty clear...
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