Healthy Transportation Options
What may influence your decision to leave your car in the driveway? Is it a need for complete streets? What about access and convenience? Would you like to improve your health while your carbon footprint takes a plunge? Then I would like to share with you www.goodgoingwny.com.
This website was designed for WNY’ers in order to assist them in discovering healthy options for their everyday transportation needs. Its simple, enter your starting address and destination and the program is designed to identify bicycle routes, facilitate carpool matches in addition to providing metro bus and rail options.
Ecology and Environment, Inc., one of the worlds leading organizations in pioneering innovative methods for ride sharing and healthy transportation options, has partner with the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, Buffalo Niagara Enterprise, Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council, NFTA, Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Buffalo Niagara Human Resource Association to conceive The Earth Day 2008 Initiative as a way to launch this program to all WNY’ers.
Your organization can sign-up to participate in this initiative by simply visiting www.goodgoingwny.com, registering on the site and encouraging your employees or members to walk, bicycle, take public transit or carpool on April 22nd 2008. Through your organization’s participation and support you will receive:
Your logo featured on the website;
Your organization will garner positive local and national media attention;
Be able to compete for organizational awards for your level of participation, overall emissions saved, etc.; and
Members of your organization will benefit from reduced transportation costs, and you will play a part in improving air quality, reducing traffic congestion and enhancing the quality of life in WNY.
Another option that is being considered is a “bicycle there” button through Google maps. There is currently an online petition so that the good folks at Google will add the feature. The idea being that a route would be identified which would take into account actual bicycle lanes from the locality being mapped and identify a route for a bicyclist giving them options for the most direct route, scenic or safest options.
These types of tools being produced can help facilitate options for those of us who want a choice. Check out www.goodgoingwny.com and give it a try, get your employer involved. Go and sign the petition for Google. With tools such as these the guess work is taken out of using healthy transportation options for your everyday needs. You may be surprised how easy and enjoyable it can be reading a book during your commute home from work or feeling the warm spring breeze whip past your face on a bicycle so much so, that these choices become a part of your regular routine. At the very least it doesn’t hurt to give it a try.
What Others Have To Say
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Comment Options
Hoss
Neato! I will check it out. Maybe I can find some carpoolers willing to go to the Essex on those cold and icy nights.:)
I heard that one can bike to Toronto with 85% of the trip being on bike paths. Does anybody know if this is true? That could be a fun ride.
I sent a letter to Council member LoCurto when you posted the Complete Streets site a few weeks back. I just this week received a reply that stated
"I have reviewed the Complete Streets materials and am looking into sponsoring legislation enacting some of its recommendations."
Fingers Crossed.
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sbrof
Will also check it out. As for the google API what about talking to the BuffaloGeek group. Maybe someone who knows something about scripting can write it themselves. Other cities / organizations / artists have used google as a basemap to overlay all kinds of data. I thought about working with the NFTA to get the NFTA bus routes plugged into google. IT would help make the route much more understandable to people because those abstact non-scalled things they call maps on their website are horrid for anyone new to the area or the system. You really don't know where the bus goes with confidence until you take it once.
I think google has a package / information on their google labs website that talks about this type of thing. Just another options.
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FunGuy
Oy vay! Here we go again!
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sbrof
PS I also have most of the bike lanes and bike paths for the city drawn up in CAD, if that helps make anyones life easier I would be willing to share.
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thinker
Ahhhhh, E & E, a office with roughly 300 people based on a greenfield in Lancaster with one of the largest trip generations for auto-dependent employees, many living in Orchard Park, East Aurora, and Buffalo. Gee, talk about marketing one thing and doing another. How about they move into the city and reduce their carbon footprint. Forget about the building being environmentally friendly, the simple fact remains that 300 people driving by themselves into exurbia is not the mark of an environmental company.
Great idea, but nothing is worse than a hypocritical company saying one thing and doing another.
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JBooth
thinker - despite being out in Lancaster - and believe me, as a resident of Downtown Buffalo I would prefer to see them down here as well - they have instituted an innovative program that provides incentives to curb employees driving by themselves.
The way it works is that the company pays an employee one dollar a day or 50 cents each way for every day they car pool, walk, bicycle or use public transportation. Employees participating in the program are eligible to win a $500 monthly raffle and a single annual drawing of $1,000. What is really commendable is that they have been doing this since 1973 and keep tabs of what the impact has been including; ~ 31 million miles of driving avoided ~ 1.7 million gallons of gasoline saved ~ 13,000 tons of CO2 emissions avoided ~ 1.5 million lbs of carbon monoxide avoided ~ 125,000 lbs of NOx avoided ~ 215,000 lbs of hydrocarbon emissions avoided
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brokeleg
sbrof- that info would be greatly appreciated. I sold my car in october and since then have been using the metro to get to school downtown and work in midtown. I lost 20 pounds in three months by getting out of my car and using my legs while im young and reasonably healthy. I suggest to anyone who has the means to use public transport. and use the stairs, they add up. I understand that the straight-line express is out of the way for alot of people. its a shame the feds nor the state nor the city (nor anyone) has the cash to expand the rails. sob.
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wizardofza
thinker is 100% right. "Being Green" is a hot new trend rife with so many contradictions. Most people will gladly adopt a bunch of feelgood, "green" technofixes that may marginally reduce their carbon footprint, while maintaining what's basically the same energy wasteful lifestyle. People in this country are deluded by this quasi-religion which holds that all our problems can be fixes by effortless applications of flashy new technologies.
Buy a hybrid car? Sure, consuming less gas... but still keeping the same driving lifestyle that requires so much land to be wasted on wide roads and gigantic parking lots. Build a super "energy efficient" home in a far-flung suburb? Great for utility bills, but still generating countless SOV car trips. Eat lots of organic and whole foods?...That's great but likely it still get shipped thousands of mile via dirty diesel trucks to the big supermarket.
Want to really go green?? Ask a typical family of 4 to slim down to ONE car (and even then, use as less as possible), live in a rowhouse or multifamily building in a walkable urban neighborhood, eat only foods produced within a 200 mile radius, don't buy so much cheap crap from bigbox stores, don't parktake in occupations which perpetuate environmental exploitation...ect, ect,
......and then GREEN won't seem so damn trendy anymore, hahahha.
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MiesvanderDoh
I am big advocate for the bus/subway, but it falls short all too often. While I was in the middle of replacing the clutch on my car, I had to take the bus to 2 job interviews. On both occasions, the bus was at least 15 minutes or more off schedule, so out of the 4 trips (2x there and back) I walked or ran 3 out of the 4 times.
I always ride my bicycle in the summer, the only times I drive are to go to hockey practice/games or do laundry. But in the winter I'm stuck in the thing because the schedule is lacking.
and I know it's tough; they don't run as frequently as they could because the ridership often isn't there, but the ridership isn't there because they don't run frequently enough. vicious cycle
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sbrof
I don't have the NFTA stuff into a functional or updated system yet. So I can't really help you there, but I do know they have the GIS files and it wouldn't take too much effort to figure out how to get them into google or some other user friendly medium
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wizardofza
MiesvanderDoh, about public transportation....
It will only be effective when there is critical centralizing of economic activity..in other words, plenty of jobs and services, and other important amenities tightly packed into a dense, walkable downtown. When most of that stuff is flung all over auto-dependent suburbia, it becomes impossible for public transit to conveniently reach...therefore the car dependency lifestyle is further perpetuated. It really is a vicious cycle.
Getting the people of WNY to reconsider their driving habits won't go too far. Almost all of this region is a big car-dependent sprawl and most people belong to multiple generations who know no life that's not behind the wheel.
Perhaps as gas gets more and more expensive, stubborn spoiled Americans will have to rethink their living arrangements. Then maybe the great old cities and towns of yore will return to their former glory by sheer necessity.
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sbrof
as per NFTA it is really hit or miss. I take the train to and from downtown to south everyday. It is like clockwork. Always at my station about the exact time everyday. Give or take 60 seconds. I then transfer to the 44 to head out of the city, it is always ready and waiting and leaves about 2 minutes after I get there. It is a faster transfer and overall trip than if I took UB's shuttle.
When it works it works well but I agree this isn't the norm. It is often a matter of getting used to the route you are on. Example being the 25 Delaware. I often take it north out of the city and while it is constantly 10 minutes late at Allen street from the schedule time it still gets to the end destination at the right time. The NFTA really needs to take a closer look at their routes, and how fast buses can travel different segments of it. They often get the end points right but the times in between are not reliable at all, especially since we are left to guessing for ourselves when it should reach my stop... Something that I know has turned at several people away from using the system all together. They need to put MORE stop times on their routes because not everyone knows how long it take to get to north from Delavan or to summer-best from Theatre etc. Anyone without a good sense of direction or familiarity with the system is at a total loss to how to even basically use the system. Too bad they don't seem to listen to any of my comments because I have emailed them often without response several times about these and other issues.
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MiesvanderDoh
The catalysts will be lack of parking downtown and high cost of petrol. I also wouldn't mind getting rid of the 190, 198, and most of the 33, but that's long term (or never).
the area I was referring to was Elmwood (the 20), I needed to go from Breckenridge to Virginia
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MiesvanderDoh
The catalysts will be lack of parking downtown and high cost of petrol. I also wouldn't mind getting rid of the 190, 198, and most of the 33, but that's long term (or never).
the area I was referring to was Elmwood (the 20), I needed to go from Breckenridge to Virginia
the train is a lot more reliable, however it doesn't make sense for me to walk from ashland to w. utica and main, take the tran to allen and main and walk to virginia and elmwood. it would be great if we were some day a big city and had a real subway. less money on salting roads, less parking problems, out of the elements, etc.
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knock_knock
HOSS, here is the link to the bike trail to Toronto. www.waterfronttrail.org/index.html VIA rail also has a bike train that goes from Toronto to Niagara Falls. They but a box car on the end to transport your bike so you don’t have to dissemble it. www.biketrain.ca/
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knock_knock
^ Here is the down loadable version 20 + pages but free. www.waterfronttrail.org/trail.html
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