A look at the U-Line impact study

So the Draft Environmental Impact Study for Metro's proposed University light rail line has been released — a lot of information that a lot of people will be poring over. Fortunately, Christof at Intermodality has a summary of the DEIS for the line's western segment already, and here's what he found:

• There are three alignment options for the Main-to-Hillcroft segment of the University Line: Richmond to Cummins to Westpark, Richmond to Greenway to Westpark, and Richmond to Montrose to 59 to Kirby to Westpark.
• The Richmond-Cummins-Westpark option has 11 stations, the Greenway option has 10 (one fewer station in Greenway Plaza) and the 59 option has seven, with no stops at Dunlavy, Kirby, Buffalo Speedway or Weslayan — which, it would seem, would eliminate access to the line for a lot of potential riders.
• The Cummins alignment — which would keep the line on Richmond Avenue through Greenway Plaza, allowing for two stations serving the office buildings, residences and Lakewood Church there — would have a 25 percent higher ridership than the 59 option (an estimated 43,590 daily boardings for Cummins vs. 31,920 for 59) and would cost the least ($534 million) of the three alignments.
• The DEIS also includes Bus Rapid Transit options for the three alignments (which would involve buses running on dedicated guideways that could later be used for rail) and an option for improved local bus service. There's also a "no-build" option, which is pretty self-explanatory.

Part of the concern over building the University line has been that it would wreak havoc with traffic. As Christof notes, traffic is going to be bad along the Richmond/Westpark corridor whether there's rail or not: Without rail, every major street intersection along the corridor is expected to be very congested by 2030. With rail, some of the intersections would be a little worse and some better. What's interesting, though, is that running the line along Highway 59 would apparently be a disaster: The support columns for the elevated rail structure would take a lane from the southbound 59 frontage road between Shepherd and Kirby and the outside shoulder from the southbound freeway between Shepherd and Spur 527. That could cause backups on the frontage road and would slow traffic on the freeway itself because people don't drive as fast when they're driving next to barriers.