Uline east: It’s an essay question
I touched briefly on the east end of the University Line a few weeks back. Thanks to Carroll Robinson at TSU, I now know a lot more about what’s going on in that part of town.
METRO has proposed 3 different alignments for the University Line in the Third Ward. And it turns out none of them are ideal:
- Wheeler is fundamentally unacceptable to TSU.
- Elgin serves the part of the Third Ward (the Bottoms) that the community would most like to see revitalized with rail, but it doesn’t serve TSU.
- Alabama serves neither TSU nor the Bottoms particularly well, and there are concerns about the impact of an Alabam alignment on Cuney Homes.
But even if METRO presents this as a multiple choice question, it’s really an essay question. And there’s another possibility:
- Follow Wheeler or Blodget from Main Street to the edge of the TSU campus.
- Turn north on Ennis, with a station right next to TSU.
- Turn east again on Wheeler or Alabama and continue to a connection with the Southeast Line and UH.
In other words, serve TSU without cutting through campus and still serve the heart of the Third Ward.
Is this the right answer? I don’t know; that’s for TSU and the Third Ward community to figure out. But it’s an intriguing option, and I’ve heard some support for it.
Overall, the Third Ward seems to want rail — if it’s in the right place. Unfortunately for them, the future of this line is tied up in the political circus on Richmond. The bottom line is that if the University Line doesn’t get built west of Main it probably doesn’t get built east of Main, either.
Other ideas for METRO? Visit our forums.