There has been on again off again talk of connecting PHX and Tucson, which usually comes to nothing. I know of several folks who've made the trip over to talk to those folks about doing something like that, and were able to bill them for their time.

There is substantial surface and freeway congestion in the Metro PHX region, and parts of the I-10 are pretty dismal in the urban areas. And, besides the joy of working "with" the UP, I am not sure how time and cost competitive, or what the demand there would be for trips from PHX (and local suburban stations)to Tucson.

PHX regional trip patterns, from work I saw back in the early 2000's associated with the widening projects for the (IIRC?) I-10, showed a lot of "everywhere to everywhere" distribution, with a lot of small trip "attractor" centers, and not that many big ones. The LRT has had problems with this, in attracting more riders, due to this pattern of housing-jobs-commerce "sprawl", and a lack of "big" destination centers, as well.

So how well the costly restoration of parts of the UP and/or working "with" them providing commuter or short distance IC services to Tucson would work in terms of optimal routing, ridership, and costs, is still a big unknown, as I've seen no modeling of any of that likely demand. And, this is a State with a large rural voting base, who would see no benefits, and are not inclined to vote to fund such things. So service to the station is not anywhere on the horizon, that I can see, anytime soon.

What would you use a train station with no trains for? This one is a "big city" station and a little large for a restaurant... It is a great building, though, in a lousy neighborhood, and it would be a shame to lose it