Metro Rail: The Original Vision

Wow. That's nuts. 99 families and 78 businesses sounds like a bit more than a minor impact. But what the hell, the Kensington had just gone up to great acclaim

I'm waiting to see a post from paulsobo about how important it is to expand rail out to UB North and the Larkin and to the Terminal and the airport and...

Honestly though, since this is being brought up. I'd love to hear about something more than a pipe dream architect concept of mass transit all over the place. I'd love to hear a realistic explanation of how it could work and be feasible.

Matt Richiazzi... you provided a link to a great concept and you soap-boxed how vital it is and how people will "flock to the east side"... however you provided ZERO information supporting the idea. I'm not going for an eye-poke, I'd love to hear some numbers and some reality.

Looks great...ahh....what could of been

Interesting!
I don't have a car myself, and I like public transportation, but honestly, it isn't as convenient as having a car. And with self-driving cars that sip natural gas coming soon, the convenience gap will only increase.

Just completing Phase 1 to North Campus would have made a huge positive difference in the benefits of Metro Rail to WNY.

If it ever happens a connection to UB is the first logical choice it is the only other place that is densely populated enough to warrant an extension.

It would be foolish to think someone from Amherst would drive their car to a station park their car, wait and pay for a train, to go to work. By the time they got on the train they would have already been half way to work.

Until parking or car transit times drastically increase it is very very hard to justify expansion of the rail system.

Only other opportunity would be an extension to new waterfront stadium.

Airport extension is a pipe dream who would use it? Most of the airport traffic is coming from Canada anyways.

I love the `70s disco era metro logo.

> Eventually the reality of paying for this mega-scheme hit home and officials scaled the idea back to the pedestrian mall with surface rail that exists now (which was even more scaled back as construction progressed).

Not really.

The original plans for the first Metro Rail called for the line to be elevated north of Delavan Avenue. There was vocal neighborhood opposition to the proposal, especially in the Kensington/University Heights area. The result: the entire line would be underground north of downtown. Unfortunately, the increased cost of a longer underground portion meant that expenses needed to be cut elsewhere; thus, light rail instead of heavy rail, the pedestrian all instead of a covered Main Street, and terminating the line at UN South instead of UB North.

The light rail system Buffalo got cost about as much to build, in inflation-adjusted dollars, as what was estimated for the original proposal for the heavy rail "Blue Line" to UB North.

I've got some sketches of the planned rolling stock somewhere. They resembled BART cars more than what's pictured.

[begin]

"The sleek rail rapid transit vehicle shown above has been designed for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority by Peter Muller-Munk Associates, of Pittsburgh. Electrically propelled, the trains will pick up power from a third rail carrying 650 volts of direct current. They will travel at about 55 MPH (90 kph).

Each Metro car will be 9'6" (2.9m) wide, 67' (20.5 m) long, and 11'2" (3.4 m) high from the top of the rail. The front end will be a fiberglass molding, with two windshields and en emergency evacuation door, and will provide for the train operator's cab and controls.

The photograph shows the NFTA Metro car as it would look at a platform in a subway station. The Metro transit stations will be designed to accomodate six-car trains, operating at 2-minute headways in peak traffic hours. The Metro cars will comfortable seat 60 seated passengers and 52 standees, for a total of 112 passengers in normal rush hour loading. They will have a maximum crush-load capacity of more than 200 passengers. The large, attractive picture windows will have tinted glass. There will be three sliding doors on each side of the car. These doors will permit two persons to enter or exit simultaneously. "

Also, at the risk of sounding like a transit geek, which I'm not, Bechtel drafted detailed engineering plans for the entire proposed Metro Rail system. The plans included details of all the stations; the underground stations mostly had brutalist design that were something of a hybrid of what's seen in DC and Atlanta. The elevated section rested on concrete pylons, much like Miami's Metrorail. A major station was planned to be inside the Skyway loop ramp at Seneca and Pearl, with a domed roof.

The whole thing was a fantasy right from the start. The only reason for its existence was that there was federal money available to build it and that it would put people to work. Buffalo at that time needed no more justification for doing anything other those reasons. The mall is a total failure because as soon as it was built it was pretty much ignored. The politicians had other things to do, like looking for more federal dollars for other projects we did not need. Thankfully, we have more concerned people here with a stake in Buffalo's future with more intelligent decisions.

One very important thing helped kill this grand plan: NIMBY

The pedestrian mall should have never been build, the entire line should have been underground. The stations along underground section are too elaborate, much simpler would have been much cheaper and efficient.
Recently had visiting friends and family from Europe express their surprise at how clean and graffiti free our system is :) Hopefully with the construction and growth of UB at the Medical Campus a major push for expansion can be pursued for the North campus.
An airport/Transit Rd. extension is still plausible; not so much for all the Canadians flyers but for downtown workers that have to pay an arm and leg for monthly parking fees.

Gotta' love the terms you'll now only hear from old-timers.

* SUNYAB (spoken as a single word at the time: "soon-YAB")
* Meyer Memorial Hospital.
* Audubon _New Town_.

There is a report available at the Central Library from very early in the planning stages, when the downtown segment was still hoped to be underground.

Of the three downtown stations, the main hub was going to be "Lafayette"... not Lafayette SQUARE, just Lafayette... because the square was going to be removed and the NFTA headquarters building built in its place as a high-rise!

Those very early plans had a lot of ideas that I think we can all agree we're lucky didn't happen... the segment between Tupper and Ferry was to be built as an elevated line above Main St, similar to the El in Chicago.

* Complete Olmsted parks and parkway system.
* Model City.
* Gillette's Metropolis.
* Grand Union Station.
* Audubon Village at Millersport and Maple in Amherst.
* Buffalo City Hall tower extensions.
* The completed Audubon New Town.
* The domed stadium in Lancaster.
* The Crosstown Expressway, Lancaster Expressway, Outer Beltway, and the West Side Expressway.
* Marine Midland Tower 2.
* High rise office tower on Main Street at the southeast corner of Main and Eagle.
* Adelphia Tower.
* ABC - Amherst-Buffalo Corridor.
* Niagara Jetport in Pendleton.
* The All-American Canal.
* Walt Disney World in Niagara Falls.
* The waterfront Zoo.
* New Hyatt Regency tower.
* Magical Land of Oz.
* E-Zone.
* The Arch of Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and International Shrine of the Holy Innocents of the Precious Blood of the Martyrs of the Blessed Saints of the Infant Jesus of the ...
* New York Central electrification of the Buffalo-NYC rail corridor.
* Peace Bridge signature span.
* McKinley Mall second level.

It's nice and all, but why does every station in the system have an above ground concourse? You only see that in the super elaborate stations of systems like the TTC and MTA. It just seems like a huge waste of money when all that's really needed is a metro vending machine, a set of stairs, an escalator, and the platform itself.

Only the NFTA would heat a room for half a dozen people waiting on buses.

> It's nice and all, but why does every station in the system have an above ground concourse?

Metro Rail was never intended to serve primarily those living around stations, as with the systems in NYC or other very large cities. It was intended to serve passengers transferring from feeder bus lines.

Before Metro Rail, many bus routes in Buffalo traveled on Main Street to downtown at some point. This resulted in lower parts of Main Street having extremely frequent service; a bus every minute in some cases. There were also far fewer crosstown bus routes.

One purpose of Metro Rail was to allow for more efficient use of the bus fleet. Instead of so many routes traveling down Main Street, bus routes would instead end at large Metro Rail stations. The stations would serve as transfer points not only for bus to rail, but also bus to bus. It was hoped that this would result in increased bus frequencies by making the routes shorter, and allow for more crosstown routes.

An example, instead of separate East Utica/Main and West Utica/Main lines, there would be a single Utica crosstown line, with those going downtown transferring to rail at the Utica station. With the Main Street portion of the routes gone, service on East/West Utica could be provided at the same frequency, or even increased, with far fewer buses.

Dare to dream !!
I am looking for a rendering of Pilot Field when it was supposed to be expanded ! TY and Merry Christmas

What might have been. (sighs)
I find it interesting how we're still talking about plans that were drawn up 40 years ago. We should be drawing up plans for how we're going to get around in 40 years. We should be encouraging discussion of newer, modern transit solutions that work for a smaller, economically distressed city. Cities all over the world comparable to Buffalo are investing in Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which is essentially a bus that acts like a tram. It has a designated lane, fares must be purchased in a station prior to boarding, and it only stops at said stations. It is relatively cheap to implement and flexible so it change to meet changing transit patterns. Google Curitiba, Brazil; the city that invented this. Buffalo has some very wide streets that could be successful with this. Niagara and Broadway come to mind immediately. Pittsburgh and Cleveland have invested in BRT and it seems to be working for them so far. If it can work in similar sized rust-belt cities it can work here too.

You are correct friend I don't know a whole lot about BRT I'm just interested in starting a conversation about it. Seems much more realistic and feasable than expanding light rail to North Campus, airpot, etc., etc., and all the other totally unrealistic plans that get bandied about on this site.

Next up -- we should spend a billion dollars to revitalize the Beltway line, because that was in use during Buffalo's heydey, and surely that will bring people to downtown and be a viable commuter line.

then we have to spend another couple of billion on a new line that goes down Humbolt Parkway, because that once was an important traffic area, and we really really need to make it nice for drivers.

of course, no one bothers to say who exactly will benefit from all this. Would any of you build a new building along these lines just because there is a metro stop there? Development happens for a reason -- because there is GROWTH that needs to be accommodated. Without growth, there is no need for any new development.

There is a need for office space in the medical campus because there is growth there. There is no need for new housing in the east side because there is no growth there. Building a first class metro line down Broadway isn't going to bring growth there -- but hey, if you have any examples of that happening anywhere else in the world, be my guest to prove me wrong.

stop stop stop it , my side are hurting from laughing so much. We haven't done much right. As someone once said, "The only thing Buffalo is good at, is shooting its self in the foot. And their aim is getting better. "

When did this site become full of so many haters?

I agree with the comment regarding bringing back the belt line. The majority of the tracks are still there and it would service the whole city not just one area.

It runs right past Larkinville, the Waterfront, Downtown, up the West Side along the water, then across right past Rocco Termini's FWS location, Tri-Main, then down through the east side passing Central Terminal. It would be a remarkable tourist asset that would feature some of our more positive accomplishments.

If you look at a google map of buffalo you can still see the loop making its way around us. It already intersects the metro at the Waterfront and at Tri Main so people could make connections that would get them through the center of town. Just saying....

I wish this was here. The Hamburg line would most likely run within a few blocks of my house in South Buffalo. I dream of the day I could ride the train to Sabres or Bisons games or just downtown for dinner and drinks. We do those things often and I'd love to not worry about driving.

Plus, uniting all 3 UB campuses seems like a no-brainer. I'd like to see it as part of the Medical School plan. It seems like if UB combined with the Buffalo Billion and federal grants it could be feasible.

Great article queenseye. This is the first time I've seen this.

That "Richmond Corridor"... was that really going to be an elevated train running along Richmond Avenue? I can't imagine they would have planned for a subway under Richmond. Guess we dodged a (silver) bullet on that one.

A streetcar line might work well on Richmond, though probably better on Elmwood or Grant.

If you like this plan, you'll loooove this one for Times Square in NYC, from just a decade earlier:

http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/1960s-times-square-plans-that-never-came-to-pass/

Not only do I like it, I like it a lot! What an exciting concept. Never would I have ever imagined that the original infrastructure to be extant all these decades later.

Distinctly I recall what I was told were trolley tracks down many of the streets in Erie Co. as late as the mid 60's. I do not know from what decades they were last operational, but right down the center of many major thoroughfares they were. Kenmore had them on Delaware Ave. I used to watch the horses' hooves during the parades for fear they might get stuck in the spaces between the tracks and the pavement.

I remember hearing the adults around me debating whether to pull them up, bury them, or pave them over perhaps in the same manner young people overhear discussions today about the Skyway or Canalside. Before that, there were serious conversations about the coming effects of the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway on the Buffalo economy.

Once the rails had vanished, never did I think That such a relatively intact system remained in these places awaiting a resurrection. But, I now I have more insight into why I never saw any of my grandparents drive a car. No need.

During the 50's and 60's, public transportation in the city and into the suburbs was fairly decent. The original street design lent itself well for crosstown traffic patterns. They ran all night at frequent intervals and out to the burbs. Even on weekends.

Most everyone knows of Buffalo's legendary ethnic self-segregation (as I call it). This loop provides an excelent way to reach most of these neighborhoods in a way that was way ahead of its time. Let's hope that this can be brought to life with out the powers that be destroying it. We were talking about the Skyway when I was a kid. Now I am retired and there it still stands with the same tired suggestions being recycled.