Rad Sallee’s Move It! column today says that Richmond Avenue rail is not a new idea. It was first proposed back in the early 1980s, but ran into problems:
Retired architect Edward “Ted” Richardson dropped by last week with some interesting reading: two environmental impact statements that the Metropolitan Transit Authority produced in the early 1980s for what it then called the “Southwest/Westpark corridor.”
[snip]
An interesting sidelight to today’s debate: Both street-level light rail as a transit mode, and Richmond as a route, were ruled out. The 1980 draft environmental statement says light rail would cause “severe traffic disruption on major cross streets and operate at relatively low speed.”
And guess what? A vote was held:
Voters turned down that plan by a scorching 62 percent to 38 percent. Two decades later, by contrast, they approved — narrowly — the plan that’s binding now.
Ahhh, but voters did not approve a Richmond rail line in 2003. They (barely) approved (they thought) a Westpark rail line. Perhaps we now see why Metro didn’t put Richmond language on the 2003 ballot.
