University of Houston students angry over subway line removal

University of Houston students are expected to pressure Houston Metro to reconsider a rapid bus line that would connect many suburban students to their campus when they speak at a city council meeting Tuesday.

Transit officials announced last month that they were abandoning the University Corridor, citing financial hardship and pressure on other services if the project goes forward. Advocates, including UH students, worry about the impact of the delay on the project’s long-term viability, though Metro officials have said their decision is not an abandonment of what voters approved.

The line is expected to run from the Tidwell Transit Center south along Lockwood to the University of Houston and Texas Southern University, then west primarily along Wheeler, Richmond and Westpark to the Westchase Park and Ride. Some students have hailed the promise of the corridor for how it could improve access to higher education, leading the UH Student Government Association to formally ask Metro to revive the project.

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“Students who travel to the University of Houston are the heart of the university,” said Savannah Bivens, a student representative who co-authored a resolution urging transit officials to reconsider. “We had high hopes for this.”

University of Houston officials, however, were not as convinced by the plan as some students appeared to be.

In response to questions about the corridor, UH referred the Houston Chronicle to a letter that university Chancellor Renu Khator sent to Houston Metro after the board of trustees approved the pause in June. Khator pointed Metro to a list of concerns she sent them in 2022 — among them that having both rail and transit around campus would have a significant impact on traffic and mobility, especially during large events, and that it would effectively cut UH off from major highways and thoroughfares.

Metro and UH have formed a task force to address these issues, but no formal resolution has been reached, the president said.

“Our concerns detailed in that letter remain,” Khator wrote in the latest communication. “As a major player in this discussion, we hope that decision-makers will consider the concerns detailed in the letter as we work with you and others to review the University Line and other projects in a joint effort to create a multimodal transportation system that serves our entire community.”

UH has more than 46,000 students, 83 percent of whom live off campus, and employs 3,200 faculty members. Many off-campus students live in Houston suburbs and commute to campus daily, a trend that has earned UH a nickname that Khator has tried to shake: “Cougar High.”

TSU has 8,500 students, 77 percent of whom live off campus, according to the institution’s data. The university also employs about 1,400 faculty and staff.

“Texas Southern University was pleased to participate in the planning process as a community partner for the University Corridor, alongside other universities,” officials said in a university statement. “TSU always welcomes opportunities to provide access to our campus for our students and visitors. We look forward to working with METRO on next steps.”

The University Corridor was once the backbone of the region’s long-term transportation plan, but it could now be delayed for years. Voters approved it in 2019, creating a route where buses would run on their own lanes, separated from car traffic. Most of the cost, estimated at $2.2 billion, was to come from federal funds, with the rest provided by Metro through its share of the region’s 1-cent transportation sales tax.

Metro officials said in June, when they decided to abandon the project, that the cost would tie up too much of the agency’s capital program.

“We have a responsibility to make sure our decisions are financially sound,” said Elizabeth Brock, the city’s chair. “Without numbers to back it up, we can’t move forward.”

Authorities have spent $72 million over three years to prepare the planned project for construction. The extent to which that work can be restarted when the project resumes, whether Metro decides to continue with the design or seeks to change the route or other parts of the project, is up in the air.

In the meantime, Metro could move forward with some aspects of the long-term plan. Officials are also moving forward with other planned projects that were to connect the university corridor, including a high-speed bus to Inner Katy.

Benjamin Rizk, former president of the UH student government, said he believes many students who commute from Katy would have benefited from the line.

He commuted before moving closer to campus, and he knows students who spend more than an hour in the car each day. Those hours are precious, Rizk said, and those who can take public transportation can at least get their homework done during that time. (The Metro Purple Line, a light rail option, runs from downtown to UH.) Bivens said on-campus students like her can also struggle with not having reliable transportation to take them off campus.

And a rapid bus line would apparently help achieve Khator’s goals of making UH a more residential campus, increasing graduation rates and becoming a top 50 public university, Rizk said.

Reliable public transportation has long been linked to access to and success in higher education. Kate Elengold, an assistant professor of law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, said she found in a 2019 survey that transportation reliability came out on top when she asked Americans what the biggest barriers were to their decision to drop out of college.

The problem was present for council respondents, but especially for Latinos, Elengold said.

“Transportation was kind of the thread that connected a lot of different things for students who were all living full, complex lives,” she said. “When transportation failed on one of those axes, students dropped out.”

However, many universities may be hesitant to bolster public transportation around their campuses, Elengold said.

“There’s a debate between access, affordability, cost and culture,” she said. “A lot of universities are trying to do a lot of things that may be in conflict with each other.”

Dug Bugley contributed to this article.