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Business is good at Joe’s Deli in northwest Houston.  But Joe Hernandez says it’s not like it used to be. “Eventually I had to just shut it down.”

KHOU - TV

“It” was his pride and joy, a little sandwich shop Hernandez used to have on Main Street.

A shop that, he says, was swallowed up in the chaos of Metro’s light rail construction along the Main Street corridor.

“All the businesses like mine, they went out of business because of the construction,” said Hernandez.

And even Metro acknowledges things were ugly. 

So, with plans now in the works for the construction of five new lines, will this happen again?

“Now we’re working with a single prime contractor on at least four of the lines, and that facilitates communication and coordination of work,” said one Metro official.

Metro also says that rather than tearing up several miles of roadway, like in 2003, the new lines will be constructed in half mile increments, one at a time.

“I think it opens up more opportunities for bigger conventions and things like the Olympics to come down here,” said Roland Phelps who is an area resident.

But that’s a tough sale for some property owners on Wheeler Street, whose houses sit right along the planned university corridor.

“We simply don’t want it, even if they took one house at a time, we don’t want it,” said Lillie Johnson who is a homeowner.