After months of debate and uncertainty, Phoenix will move forward with the controversial light-rail extension in south Phoenix.

Community concern over the proposed 5.5-mile, light rail project — planned for Central Avenue between Washington Street and Baseline Road — erupted in early 2018 when a group dubbed "4 Lanes or No Train" sprouted in south Phoenix.

The group said it was concerned that the project, which is set to whittle Central Avenue down to two lanes, will bottleneck traffic and kill businesses.

The council approved the two-lane design in 2014. Voters approved funding for the project in 2015. But some residents and business owners said they hadn't been told about the lane decrease or included in the decision-making process.

Following a series of heated meetings, the Phoenix City Council voted in June to study the possibility of amending the project to maintain four traffic lanes.

Valley Metro, the region's transit agency, found it could maintain four lanes, but it would have to eliminate bike lanes and bus pullouts, decrease dedicated turn lanes and limit landscaping.

Valley Metro and Phoenix hosted a series of meetings in August and September to compare the two-lane and four-lane options.

On Wednesday, the Phoenix City Council voted 6-2 to maintain the two-lane configuration, with Vice Mayor Jim Waring and Councilman Sal DiCiccio voting in opposition.

The vote also requires that the city gather community input and develop a plan to address gentrification and redevelopment concerns in the area.

However, the fight still may not be over. Earlier this month, a group of south Phoenix residents submitted paperwork to put all light rail projects back on the ballot.

The group must collect 20,510 valid signatures in six months to get the initiative on the ballot.

MORE: Phoenix light-rail projects could go back to voters

A referendum on light rail

The south central light-rail debate morphed into a referendum on light rail this summer.

The group that was originally calling for four lanes on Central Avenue decided it no longer wanted the train in south Phoenix at all, regardless of the number of traffic lanes.

Although Wednesday's vote was technically to decide whether to move forward with a four-lane or two-lane design, it was also a referendum on the project, Valley Metro CEO Scott Smith warned.

The $1 billion light rail project is expected to receive about $600 million in federal funding, but only if it meets federal deadlines. One of those deadlines requires Valley Metro to begin the engineering phase of the project by November.

Smith said that if the council had voted on a four-lane configuration, it would have taken 12-18 months to complete the redesign and a mandatory environmental impact process. Valley Metro would have missed the November deadline and the project would be suspended.

The federal government could have revived the project, but the chances of that are "one in a million," Smith said.

The fear of losing the federal funding seemed to be the most significant motivator for many of the council members' decisions to move forward with the two-lane project.

South Phoenix left out

Valley Metro hired independent facilitator Eric Bailey to host community meetings in August and September.

Bailey told the council that in his conversations with the community, he found that many south Phoenix residents felt they'd been left out of city conversations on light rail and other important issues for decades.

"I think that dialogue in that community has been needed for a long time. I heard some people say, 'This is too little too late,'" Bailey told the council.

The council members who supported the light rail project pledged to work with the community to develop guidelines to address the main concerns they had about the light rail, including gentrification, preservation and affordability.

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