Buffalorising has been redesigned.

interesting to see what they are proposing. No matter what it is I know the CCR will make it look good.

The engineers are costing more than construction will! Enough is enough- get started already. I assume if the University Heights project is any measure, cars should be returning in five years or so.

I have been waiting for far too long to see traffic come back to Main St. We've seen designs, been to the many meetings,...LET'S DO THIS ALREADY...PLEASE!!!

Umm...Didn't the announcement come like last year that we should start to see construction in the Theatre District by THIS SUMMER? Why are we still having public meetings, show of designs when we've already had these done in the past, approved, and already had funding for the project to go ahead and start. What is going on? When does this big project actually start? Anyone know, or are we going to spend the rest of our lives having "Special Meetings" just for the fun of it?

I think it's absolutely great if they do return cars to Main Street, but I have a question. I regularly hear about studies like this taking months and months. In this case it was 10 months. What do these people do for 10 months? Are they working on multiple projects at the same time? Does it really take a full-time team 10 months to complete this kind of a study? Maybe it does, but just curious.

It has been over 5 years that they have been doing studies on this project. I was at one of the first meetings in 2001 at ECC City Campus with design plans, open discussions and everyone agreed on the same project. Cars on both sides, smaller train stations, and room for parking. We had a plan then, a semi design untill a year or two later...What is taking so long?

We shouldnt settle for this...we should be demanding a few additional light rail stations be built.

Cars on Main Street? Fine.

Cars using the Metro Rail trackbed and undermining the efficiency of public transit? No.

Just watch as every fender-bender or disabled vehicle screws up the schedules of hundreds of people on Metro Rail, which cannot just pull around an obstruction.

If there was ever a message that mass transit users are second-class citizens, this is it. By leaving your car at home, saving on gas, reducing harmful emissions, and freeing up a parking space, your reward is to be delayed for the convenience of an inept or unlucky driver who did none of these things.

I hope that a shared trackbed is not the proposed solution but I have another commitment on Tuesday, and cannot find out for myself. I hope someone will report back to BRO what they are proposing.

Ummm Mr. Jones...Yes, the design does call for sharing the track bed. However, it's the same as cars sharing the road with public buses, and going back to the days of the trolley. I doubt we will see everyday fender benders with the sharing of cars and traffic hold ups. Yeah, maby a few minutes in the schedual may be off because of this. Over all, why not have cars back on Main St? Wouldn't we fight like hell if there were a proposel to have a pedestrian mall on Elmwood Ave. today? Point being, we need the cars back, it makes the street feel busier, make getting around easier. Most people who have never been here will drive around first, park and then venture around an area. It's hard to sell Main Street today if you can't drive on it to see what is there. (This is only a reason for a select few).
Anyway, I am in all support of the opening of Main St. make it busier, make it noisey, make it a real Street Again.

oh I definitely agree that Main Street will be better off with car traffic and my prediction is that its going to increase ridership rather than decrease it. Its going to open up all the cross streets and your going to see alot of people say....drop me off at the light rail station or pick me up at the light rail station.

There are people that havent been on Main Street in 20-30 years because they dont live or work near a light rail station that will now get re-acquainted with Main Street..and idea clicking those people are going to start incorporating the light rail just as they do their cell phone.

Guys - bringing cars back to Main st. will NEVER happen - quite simply becuase Buffalo does not have the money for the project!

There are so many intelligent people on this site, but no one has figured it out yet.

The politicians who conduct these meetings have to justify there salaries for doing NOTHING. They need to kill time unitl they are eligible for their pension that we pay for!

That is why the meetings go on for 10 months or 5 yrs.

These same politicians will go back to this project again and again!

hey its on the list...and thats better than not being on the list at all.

Theres alot of transportation projects on the list that need funding from the inner and outer harbor lift bridges to the peace bridge even light rail extensions are on the list. Better to have them on the list awaiting funding than not on the list at all.

My understanding is that funding is in place for the sections from Tupper to Chippewa and South Main around the former Aud.

Guys, I appreciate your response, but lets be realistic - any funding already in place is gonna wind up in some politicians pocket downtown, that is why all of these projects have taken so long.

stupid comment

I bet the project will be done in small stages and this is a good thing.

Not all parts of Main downtown need car traffic. The Fountain Plaza section from Chippewa to Lafayette sq. would best be left as a ped. mall, there is some beautiful landscaping that would be completely decimated if it were altered.

The theater block (600) would benifit the most from mixed traffic, along with the area around the mainplace mall and old am&a's building, where there is a potential of retail once again some day.

Pedestrian Malls are not neccessarily a bad thing. But they should never be more than 3 blocks long and not placed on main thouroughfares.

Buffalo's whole light rail/ped mall system was designed back in the 70s-80s at the height of the dark age of city planning. As expected everything was screwed up royally and Main St. ceased to be Main St. We all know that story.

It's just now we should be very careful about what we undo. Some parts will be better left intact.

Cars returning to Main Street and sharing space with the light rail is a great idea and should have been designed as such originally. Cars will only have a positive economic impact to Main Street and make it even more viable. Main Street in downtown Buffalo is one of most impressive streets and with no vehicle traffic few people actually see and use it. There is room for both cars and light rail. Out of town confused people drive on it all the time. I believe the return of cars to Main Street will be a substantial shot in the arm to Main Street and spur even more development. The time is right.

STEEL - what is so stupid about my comment?

Have you not heard that our politicians have looted our city and our county is in a budget crisis? Have you not heard that our taxes are going up again? Why is it that we require a outside control board to govern our fiscal policy?

Steel, when you are done explaining why the comment was stupid, can you also give me the projected start date of the Main St. project?

project is slated to start....NEVER!!! Get a f@#$ing clue, nothing is going to happen here...EVER. Now pass me the keys to my Iroc...foo

Minor correction: quite apart from how you rate the performance of public employees, you can rest assured that you are paying only a sliver of their retirements.

The New York State Pension System is a huge investor. Visit their website and read their annual report to see exactly how much of their revenue is employer-contributed (i.e. from the municipalities you pay taxes to) and how much is generated by investment income. Only about 12% is employer-contributed, meaning that 78% of those pension checks comes from investments, not taxpayers. You can even see how much is invested where and what it earns to support the retirees.

It is one of New York's best government fiscal success stories and doesn't get any credit.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

The worst thing would be if it ends up like the NEVERENDING road work on Main St/University Dist.

If they do this piece-by-piece, it will end up taking YEARS and decimate what little business struggles to survive there.

Does ANYONE ever think of the people who OWN small businesses when they push through some "silver bullet" plan? I'm so sympathetic with the University District Business owners. What is the city doing to get that project completed? How many businesses went under while it was going on? How many dollars have been lost because of events like ridiculous work "strikes?"

Small business seem to often be undermined by a city that professes to "want more business!"

If they can't afford to do it altogether and all at one time, forget it.

"Go big or stay home!"

Buffalo doesn't need the chaos of construction adding to the other problems. Downtown is actually beginning to get its groove on; people using mass trans. more & more, Farmer's Market, Thursday In the Sq, Chip Strip, architectural tours, theater & galleries.

The last thing Downtown needs is to disrupt the beginnings of successful developments. If this happens, all of the new residential spaces will be sitting vacant until the project is completed.

Let's not let the special interests hijack this, too.

Nice photo - should be used in econ development brochures

as some of you may recall (or not) i often refer to Portland, Oregon because the city, which was orginally quite similer to Buffalo, has made many smart decisions over the years. One of them is Portland's light rail system, which now includes I think 3 lines. All 3 lines run right through the heart of Portland's downtown, SHARING THE RIGHT-OF-WAY WITH CARS. Having ridden the light rail in Portland before, I can tell you that the train is incredibly efficient and brings its passengers to their destination faster than cars would, because the traffic lights are programmed to be green whenever the train is passing through.

The notion that businesses would not survive the construction has some merit, but I think that in the long run, the project would lead to a much more prosperous Main St., with its retail locations being some of the most sought after spots in downtown, in the city, and even in Western New York.

Could someone please enlighten me to what CCR is in this discussion? Is it a UB thing?

CCR is the Center for Computational Research, a UB dept that deals in High-Performance Computing and High-End Visualization. We have been working on a 3D Realtime Traffic Visualization which will be on display this evening from 4-8pm.