This story by TampaBay.com, "Light Rail Study Will Help Decide Which Segment in Tampa to Build First" catches me by surprise and I'd be curious where most Tampa Rail readers would stand on this issue. 

Personally for as long as I've been familiar with the light rail effort in Hillsborough County, I've only ever believed, and been happy for, any first light rail line connecting to USF.  In fact, despite this story's distinction of building two lines at different times, I've always been under the impression that somehow the first line would be all-encompassing between USF and Westshore and such a debate like this would never arise.  Between these two areas I wasn't aware there'd be a "first" line at the expense of a "second".

Which would you pick?  Why?

My first instinct is to wave this off.  Assuming USF and Westshore will be connected in differently occurring project cycles at different times, can it possibly really matter which line gets built first?  They'd both be starter lines and, in the end, the real plan is to connect them and the airport anyway. 

But this can really be dangerously dismissive thinking.  Funding always being as precarious as it is, we can't assume that when one light rail line is up and running, they're immediately going to toss the shovels and hard hats in the pickup, and drive over to begin the next line, whichever that may be.  In the worst case scenario it could be decades before the "second" line is ever started.  Tampa may have to live with the first route as the sole example and justification for building a second, which is perhaps  secondary to the idea that the first line has to, of course, be as genuinely useful as it can in any short or long term interim.  Pam and the West Tampa Chamber of Commerce each have their points here, though HART seems to be sitting pretty solid with the facts of current day ridership.  Strong ridership on the buses between USF and downtown is a facet which will likely prove infallible under any study.

The fresh USF Student Center has LRT station written all over it.

The class tension here is also somewhat glaring.  The USF-as-a-first-line route would run through Tampa's poorest neighborhoods.  One in Westshore, by contrast, would seemingly connect more affluent commercial individuals and interests, who might just as well believe that if they're going to throw their support behind community investment, they should be the first to enjoy it.

This model depicts a transit village in East Tampa.  More information on this model is here.

Shot of the general Westshore area.  Photo credit to Flickr's RockinFree.

Personally, I thought the beauty in a starter line that did both at once was to work against this potential rift.  While I'd hate to pick sides in something that isn't quite calling for side-pickin' just yet, I will say that when I lived in Tampa I was both a resident of North and Eastern parts, each which are robustly served by a hypothetical USF link.  There wasn't a place I'd be that didn't work into the immediate plans for a light rail station and so I greatly prefer to think this is where the first line will go.  Not so with Westshore.  I rarely hung out in West Tampa or had need to be there, and I really have to wonder how many homes and apartments really exist out that way.  When I think of West Tampa I think of offices and professional buildings.  Now, if someone told me, okay, the first line will be in Westshore but will also connect to the airport in the same build, you might have me.  Because getting TIA hooked up to the line ASAP is perhaps the most valuable aspect of all this and if that meant sacrificing USF as a first terminus to make it so, so be it.

Of course nobody is calling this a big deal yet.  But you wonder if it doesn't have the making of one.  If it escalated, what impact would it have?  Fortunately, first route type arguments have been part and parcel of other light rail efforts and, in most cases, rather than crumble under the disputes, most survive them well enough.