City Council unanimously approved a recommendation to analyze the Highland-East Riverside subcorridor for a potential rail route during its Dec. 12 meeting.

On Dec. 6, the Central Corridor Advisory Group, which is advising Mayor Lee Leffingwell on choosing a route for urban rail, approved its recommendation 14-1.

This subcorridor—which runs from Highland Mall along Airport Boulevard and Red River Street through the downtown core and over to East Riverside Drive—is a part of the Central Corridor in the Project Connect regional transit plan.

During Phase 1 the Project Connect planning team has been studying data on ridership, population, employment and land use in the past few months to see how the 10 proposed subcorridors ranked. East Riverside ranked the highest in potential for ridership, population and employment densities, and proposed economic development, said Urban Rail Lead Kyle Keahey during a Nov. 15 meeting. Highland ranked second in most of the criteria analyzed.

In Phase 2, the planning team will study potential streets for a high-capacity transit route, the type of transit such as urban rail and potential for ridership. The team will bring forth its final route recommendation in June.

It could be seven or eight years before any project would be up and running, Keahey said, because the city will have to follow the National Environmental Policy Act process and complete preliminary engineering work before construction can begin.

Much of the discussion during the Dec. 6 meeting centered on why the Lamar subcorridor is not being seriously considered as the priority subcorridor even though it has gained public support. Councilman Bill Spelman said because MetroRapid, Capital Metro's bus-rapid transit system, launches Jan. 26 through the Lamar subcorridor, the agency's $38 million Federal Transit Administration grant would be at risk.

"If we tried to put a train on that same corridor, two things happen," Spelman said. "One, the FTA says we have to give the money back. Second, there are a lot of practical difficulties with laying down tracks on exactly the same right of way that we're trying to run a bus-rapid transit line on. We can't do both of those things at the same time."

Council also directed the Project Connect planning team to identify funding needs and sources and to look into subsequent routes for high-capacity transit in the Lamar, Mueller and East Austin subcorridors, which all ranked in the top five subcorridors.

CCAG member Julie Montgomery, who represents Austinites for Urban Rail Action, said Spelman's response to why Lamar shouldn't be pursued is disingenuous because MetroRapid will have many years to be successful before rail would even break ground. She voted against the recommendation to pursue the Highland-East Riverside corridor because she wanted Lamar also to be studied in Phase 2.

"There are a lot of good reasons we should have kept studying Lamar," she said.