Transportation

Transportation to get to (and around) Tucson...

Amtrak  trains on the Texas Eagle route serve Tucson with connections
from Los Angeles and San Antonio.
 
Airlines that service the Tucson International Airport:
-- America West
-- American
-- Continental
-- Delta
-- Frontier
-- Northwest
-- Southwest
-- United

Another option is flight into the Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix, which is
a major hub, and a 2 hour, $30 shuttle to Tucson, that comes right to the
edge of campus.

From the Tucson airport, there is regular SunTran bus service from 4:49am
to 7:19pm, every half hour on weekdays, on the hour on weekends.  $2 buys
a Day Pass, or $1 a one way.  Take the #6 bus to campus, with a stop (but
no bus change) downtown.  There are also some hotel shuttles, or the
on-call shuttle is $18 each way, or cabs typically run $30.  We may be
able to arrange some volunteer pick-ups.
 
Transportation services around Tucson:
 
Public Transportation:  SunTran.  $2 buys a SunTran Day Pass, or $1 a one
way.  The buses are air conditioned, accessible (incl wheelchairs), and
have bike racks on the outside front.  They run on the half hour on
weekdays, on the hour on weekends.  Taxis are on call, but not often on
prowl.  But everything is in walking distance for healthy individuals.
There are also bicycle rentals.  [I haven't gotten cost info yet.]  There
are bike lanes, and drivers are used to bicyclists in this area of town.
We have been rated as "bike friendly" by national bicyclist
organizations.

Weather

Walkers and bicyclists should be aware of weather as a factor.  In June,
it will be dry-- it never rains before San Juan's day.  (June 24-- you
can attend the festival, if you like).  We've been in drought times,
brought on by global warming, so the weather patterns that have held for
centuries-- perhaps millennia-- are askew.  But this is what we expect.
By the end of July, we'll be in the monsoons, or Chubascos.  The typical
pattern is afternoon rain, hard, welcome, cooling, cleaning the dust that
you didn't even notice off of everything the eye sees, and making the air
taste sweet.

The temperatures will likely dance on both sides of 100, dropping
by 30 degrees in the night.  No joke.  Natives adapt.