Lawrence Journal-World opinion section

The Lawrence City Commission was right Tuesday to support a grant application for a city transportation hub and parking deck on the Kansas University campus.

The project will cost an estimated $30 million. The grant seeks $15 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation. KU has pledged to pick up $11 million of the cost, and the city’s share would be $4 million. The site for the project is a parking lot (Lot 90) east of Allen Fieldhouse.

It is important to note that agreeing to the grant application does not commit the city. “We can still say no to the project,” Robert Nugent, administrator of the Lawrence Transit System, told city commissioners before Tuesday night’s vote. “What we’re asking is just the opportunity to submit this grant.”

Some commissioners initially hesitated because of the increased price — the project initially was estimated to cost $20 million with the city’s portion being $2 million.

Danny Kaiser, associate director of KU Parking and Transit, said KU needed the project to be larger to be worth the university’s investment. Plans for the site include approximately 1,400 spaces in a five-story parking deck with a ground-level transportation center that includes a covered waiting area, administrative offices and restrooms.

The centrally located multimodal hub is designed to get all city bus routes to half-hour service or less, something that is not possible from the temporary transit hub in the 700 block of Vermont downtown.

The city has been working on a permanent transit hub for more than three years and has considered other locations, including 21st and Iowa streets as well as Ninth and Iowa. Those sites initially were rejected by commissioners. Last fall, transit center officials pitched the idea of collaborating with KU on a project to build the hub in Lot 90.

The project has merit — the location would benefit the many KU students who ride local buses, it is close to both downtown and west Lawrence and likely can be designed to accommodate the large number of buses without hindering traffic or negatively affecting the nearby neighborhood.

For those reasons, the city was smart to join KU in pursuing the grant, the application for which was due Friday. The grant is part of USDOT’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program, and funding decisions will be announced this fall.

In the meantime, city officials should work on a backup plan in case grant funding for the transit center at KU doesn’t come through or commissioners decide to pursue a transit center at a different location.

Voters supported the city’s transit system with a 0.05 percent sales tax in 2008, a tax that expires in 2019. It is high time the city finalize its plans for a central transit center. Tuesday’s vote could be a significant step in that direction.