Investing in Transit: Current Challenges and Opportunities

This sounds like the perfect time to bring up "Metro Rail Extention". With more people moving back into the city and who wants to keep spending money on a car? Public transit is cheaper, cleaner and can be made much easier if expanded.

BR>"A potentially transformational federal transportation bill is up for authorization, but public dialog has mainly been eclipsed by the health care debate"

Metro bus/rail is a much tougher sell when gas is cheap. It may take $4/gallon gas to put forward any serious plan to expand public transit through added bus routes and/or new rail lines.

Id love to know more about this federal transportation bill and its potential for expanding our light rail system. If there is money out there for that sort of thing we should fight for it.

yet another worthy public program that the public cannot attend, if they have jobs, that is. if you scheduled it at 5:30 or 6, i'd have a sliver of hope of getting there after work.

Extensions all the way - north campus, airport and southtowns. Would there really enough riders to justify a high speed rail from New York to Buffalo? Sure it would be nice but tax payers would get a better (although still subsidized)bang for their buck on local extensions.

"Ridership levels spiked in 2008, but have declined rapidly with the onset of the recession and falling gas prices."

Ridership has declined rapidly with the onset of the recession and falling gas prices. But there are other potential reasons for the decline in ridership. The population has continued to decline, for one. The fare also increased recently, which reduces the cost benefit of commuting by rail. And I personally stopped riding the train after two young "gentlemen" engaged in a knife fight in the isle next to my seat. Since the car was crowded, there was nowhere to go to get out of the way of the blade, for me or the other riders around me. I have seen fist fights and other crazy behavior on the train, that is simply unacceptable. And I used to take the subway in New York every day for many years, and have been on the subway in London, Paris, Toronto, San Francisco, and Munich...so it's not like I am hypersensitive. Buffalo's rail has a disproportionate amount of this type of activity, and the NFTA needs to take charge of that situation by increasing the presence of law enforcement on the train. Has anyone ever seen the video circulating worldwide on Youtube of the fight on Buffalo's commuter train? I wonder how many other formerly regular riders changed their mind about commuting on the metrorail after dangerous incidents like the one I experienced.

P.S. I probably should have said that Buffalo "appears" to have a disproportionate amount of this type of activity, since I don't have the statistics to back up my personal observaions.

Here's what Buffalo should do.

1. Go visit Portland.
2. Copy their exact system.
3. Fund it.

Stop the discussions, look at something that works incredibly well and copy it.
Don't make this difficult. The only hard thing is the funding.

For what its worth, I think everyone needs to take a different perspective that JUST current population and current sprawl and whether perople are moving into or out of what sections of the city. ITS AN OLD ARGUMENT.

If thats not the argument, then what should be the argument?

think of current and future growth potential as well as spin-off growth potential. of these, the following areas play prominently: downtown, Furhrmamm Boulevard (after the lift bridge connects it to downtown), the Larkin District, the Central Terminal, Life Sciences Fruit Belt, Buffalo State, Elmwood (potential for Trolley), Beltway, Niagara Street and Peace Bridge, Sheridan, Transit, Main, the Airport.

The potential for Buffalo is to take major centers of buffalo activities and growth...and link them so that together there is more economic activity, investment and growth than would happen individually.

Thus...this should be the real discussion.

Express routes using articulated buses are the best option for Buffalo right now. But why wouldn't the NFTA craft a masterplan for light rail lines and get them shovel-ready? I think there is an appetite for more stimulus that is targeted, especially for infrastructure projects. That's where the bipartisan support is and that's where the money would go.

Transit's success has been & will always be the movement of people for SHORT distances - through their own neighborhoods & to nearby areas. Any focus on long-distance trips from downtown to the suburbs will result in failure. Buffalo's electric line should have been built from downtown through the West Side, to Kenmore - not through the slums on Main Street.

When the streetcar companies began to fail, the first lines to close were the suburban and interurban lines, in every city.