As I was heading down Elmwood last evening I was waved down by Nick Kotrides, owner of Faherty's, Toro and Empire Grill. He was outside sweeping the sidewalk and when I approached him he pointed to the ground. "Did you see that they removed our parking meters today?" he asked me. "I thought that they were going to keep a few of them for bike stands." Indeed, The City had removed all of the parking meters on the West side of Elmwood (between Utica and Hodge), thus leaving only a couple of sign poles for an entire biking community to use. I called up Justin Azzarella, Executive Director of the Elmwood Village Association, to see if maybe he had worked out a deal with The City to intall bike racks in areas where the meters were being pulled. "No," he said. "We don't have enough money to do that. We've been looking to put racks in... but not that many as of yet."
The unfortunate thing is that the business community was not even asked if they could help foot the bill for a few of the bike racks. There is a demo bike ring that has been sitting down at City Hall for three weeks collecting dust. And now the parking poles are being removed. I bet that many of the businesses would have paid $100 to have a bike ring manufactured and installed on a parking meter pole in front of their shops. While we've been waiting for City Hall to make a decision the opportunity is being lost. So the next time you want to ride your bike to Elmwood you can thank City Hall for this missed opportunity - a missed opportunity that could have been easily avoided.
It's also too bad that a reporter from New York Magazine is coming to Buffalo this weekend and we're giving him a bike tour of our 'bike-friendly' city on Saturday. How do you explain that there are no bike racks along your most progressive business district? In this day and age, with a record number of cyclists taking to the streets due to the high price of gas... and cities promoting green measures... and the health benefits that go along with biking... this move really stinks.