After about five years of planning, local officials are close to identifying the major corridors in Eugene that may have future EmX transit lines.

They will weigh five so-called investment packages that include either an EmX line, which provides transit service every 10 minutes on weekdays, or "enhanced" lines, less costly improvements, on five corridors. Each packages option includes all five corridors — 30th Avenue to Lane Community College, Coburg Road, Highway 99, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and River Road. Each package has different combinations of service for each of the lines.

In addition to improving transit service, the MovingAhead project also includes numerous improvements to encourage walking and bicycling on the corridors.

There also is a required no-build option.

Eugene city councilors and Lane Transit District directors will hold an open house and public hearing on the packages Oct. 21. They are slated to settle on a preferred package sometime next year.

"This is the last big opportunity to help us refine what the community's vision will be," said Andrew Martin, development planner for Lane Transit District.

Local officials developed the three existing EmX lines — Gateway, Franklin and West 11th — one at a time. The package approach enables officials to save time and money on planning and an environmental study.

Once a package is selected, and federal regulators conclude its impacts have been fully studied and can be adequately mitigated, local officials will seek funding to design and construct improvements on the first corridor.

The packages don't come cheap. The least costly of the five packages is an estimated $148 million, and the most expensive is $335 million, according to three-year-old cost estimates. The estimates are for construction only and don't include annual operating costs.

LTD has relied on federal grants to pay for the bulk of construction costs for the three existing EmX lines but acknowledge it can't rely on that money as its availability may shrink as the competition for it grows.

A federal grant of about $75 million paid for the bulk of the West Eugene EmX line, which opened two years ago. The total project, including planning and design, was $100 million.

Officials are looking into possible local funding options, one of which could be including MovingAhead construction dollars in a future street repair bond.

"We might have to tax ourselves," said Chris Henry, transportation planning engineer for the city of Eugene. "We haven't had that conversation yet but we've shared that publicly."

The discussion also comes as actual ridership has fallen well short of the forecasts local officials used to secure federal funding for the West Eugene EmX project.

Average weekday ridership is 4,245 people, 57% less than the 7,399 people anticipated to board the line when the forecasts were developed in 2011.

Martin acknowledged the forecasts missed the mark, coming at time when LTD enjoyed historically high ridership and gas prices were higher, which typically drives transit use. As well, projected jobs close to the line's stops haven't come to fruition.

Still, Martin said ridership on the line exceeded the corridor's prior fixed-route numbers and has been growing since launch, with boardings per hour twice as high as most of LTD's routes.

The line is on pace this year to exceed the nearly 1.3 million boardings the line recorded in its first full year of operation in 2018.

"There's always uncertainty in projecting 20 years down the road, that's a safe thing to say," Martin said. "What the models are telling us is if we build EmX there are fairly significant ridership increases."

Henry said there are benefits to both individual residents and the community as a whole in investing in transit. To house Eugene's growing population without expanding its urban growth boundary, city land-use policy calls for increasing density on major corridors served by transit. Transit can also help the city reach its aggressive goals to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on city streets and reduce carbon emissions, officials said.

Cities have begun contemplating a future of self-driving cars navigating local streets, but Henry said the technology doesn't benefit a community's transportation system as it "perpetuates this individual choice of a single occupant vehicle."

"The more we can share rides, the better for the transportation system as we grow as a community," he said.

Better Eugene-Springfield Transportation, or BEST, a community organization that works to improve ways residents can get around the city, said it's studying the five packages as it drafts its own recommendation.

Rob Zako, BEST's executive director, said he isn't hearing disagreement with making public investments that allow residents to drive, bike, take the bus and walk more conveniently and safely.

But Zako said the organization seeks more details about how the less costly "enhanced corridor" improvements accomplish that goal and whether the benefits from spending more to launch future EmX lines makes financial sense

"We're trying to determine is it worth the money," he said.

There's also concern about whether higher operating costs from the project will result in cuts to fixed-route service or higher taxes, he said.

Follow Christian Hill on Twitter @RGchill. Email christian.hill@registerguard.com.