Buffalo Rising Online

In general, a lot of commentors, and stories, here are anti car. The tone is definitely in favor of more people and fewer cars on the streets so I will be very interested to see what direction this thread goes. Personally, I would prefer the money spent in returning cars to Main be spent on enhancing the pedestrian experience without cars. Last year I went to the Lincoln St Pedestrian Mall in Miami. Similar situation to our Main except there it used to be two one-way streets with a center median that was closed to traffic. The streets beame the sidewalk and the sidewalks became extensions of all the shops and restaurants. It was a great experience and was jammed full of people. I understand that weather has a big impact on that type of venue but I think we can find some creative ways to deal with it for that much coin. I think pedestrian-friendly ammenities, barriers to control crossing of the tracks and offering up more of the sidewalks and street to vendors and business owners would do more than a a handful of cars being able to park nearby your store or restaurant.

i heard thursday in the square is planning on being moved to the waterfront this year.

Narrow raised center medians are all the rage these days. They should not be mistaken for an Olmstead type parkway. They do nothing for a neighborhood. They become barriers that separate the street. They would do better to add that space on each side of the street with new trees

I work on the 600 block of Main Street and it's like working at the end of the earth now the way it is arranged beyond the metro rail tunnel. I starting working downtown about a year and a half ago, and I thoroughly enjoy it. I know this is a small step, but the more accessible we can make the entire downtown and the waterfront, the better!

It would be called Thursday's on the Waterfront. Instead of taking the subway half way, you would take it all the way to the end. Plus subway service would not be interrupted on those Thursdays either, since half the route would not have people in the street.

There is no reason why that portion of Main St. cant be closed off on thurday evenings in the summer for the Square. But other than that this is a big step foward

Totally incoherent, Damp. "This is a big boost [to what?] and it's up to the pedestrian supporters to make drivers envious of what goes on out there." Where, what are you talking about? Forty years? That's all of history, is it?

from two very simple standpoints i believe cars returning to main will have a positive impact on the downtown core:

1) too often when i walk up and down the main st. pedestrian mall, the scene is a quiet, desolate, and creepy...cars will at least add some noise, activity, and a feeling that your walking in the middle of a city, which will combat all the feelings i have now walking on the street

2) connectivity. having the opportunity to drive up and down main st., downtown's most developed street, will improve access to all areas of the city and make another uncomfortable downtown situation, trying to get from here to there in a maze of one ways and dead ends, a more inviting experience.

Fully revive Main Street once its opened up to traffic?? Course not... Will it Open it up to life and investment... most definitely....

Thank You New Buffalo..ppl love their cars...

Let me say.. absolute embarassment.. going down there new years eve and having nothing to do except walk around and look at the empty buildings on main... hopefully this is done by 2009 so theres the possiblity of something to do/see/shop/eat... please add some vitality

would be great for the city to open up main street and they should get rid of the metro rail as well. not many employed people use it anyways and it seems dangerous people in buffalo love their cars , i am one of them, and would love to drive down main and park right in front of a store or restaurant and spend some of my money - maybe even in a national chain restaurant for pete's sake

Rising, is that interplay between people in cars and people on the sidewalk called a drive by shooting or a car jacking by chance? It must depend on which party has the gun.

Bringing cars back to Main Street will not bring retail back. Bringing people (with money) will. The Metrorail pedestrian mall didn't kill Main St. retail; it was already dying. The mall just wasn't successful in saving retail. People are trying to find a cause and effect linkeage that doesn't exist. If there were so much need for cars and parking on Main why aren't the parallel street overflowing with traffic instead of dance in the middle empty after 6 pm? Spending the money on this is a waste.

Fix up what we have so it isn't so shabby and dated. For god's sake plant some trees and lose the 70's details. Turn a few of the parking lots into pocket parks because the downtown area has less green space than just about any city. Save bringing cars back for when the city tops 2 million people and traffic is a nightmare.

Or if you want to go really big bring the canal up Main as far as Fountain Plaza and create something really cool. Ice skating in the winter, boats in the summer, green grass, fountains and trees alongside, run the metrorail down the center with cool glass platform stations over the canal and I think the problem of getting people to visit Main Street would be solved. It may sound far fetched but elements of this work well in other cities; Ottawa, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Oklahome City to name a few and none have the true Erie Canal history that we do.

TexPat.... green space on the pedestrian mall... in other words...a nice leafy, comfortable place for junkies to shoot up... seriously...

I have heard from numerous older members of my family that main street was alive ( not booming) but alive until the pedestrian mall came.... thank you maryland... especially here... people have been addicted to their cars for decades and we get the bright idea to eliminate traffic from the main artery downtown???

Smooth Move...

Keep the train... add the shrubbery... bring the cars back.. and in 20 years we'll have a main street worth talking about

BFMD, We'll never really know if retail would have survived had cars stayed so all we can do is guess. Downtown destination retail is still tough in all but the top tier of cities. Some cities with pedestrian malls thrive and other don't. Downtown Dallas has four times as many people working in it (virtually no one living there though) than Buffalo, no pedestrian mall and it has exactly 1 department store left. Even that is an extra shabby Niemen Marcus; the hometown favorite. Yet Portland has a thriving retail district and a pedestrian mall. The key is people living downtown. Retail for the people who live or work there is a better possibility. In some ways I think Elmwood illustrates that point. There are people with money living within walking distance and that helps create the retail which then feeds on itself. Sure people come from the burbs or out of town but many more come from the neighborhood. In my opinion people moving downtown and not cars will be the catalyst for retail.

RD...totally spaced on Providence. Perfect example. That city has really turned itself around.

Hospitable. Many factors played into the death of downtown retail. I am not convinced that the pedestrian mall was even one of the main ones. Did your older relatives tell you about the retail M&A craze that left one chain (aside from Penneys, Sears, Walmart) standing, or the rise of the suburban shopping mall or the exodus of population or the Galleria? Are those same older relatives clamoring for a Macy's downtown so they can drive downtown, pay to park and skip the 200 store 70 degree comfort of the Galleria? Name for me another city with Buffalo's demographics that has a a downtown retail district of any size, pedestrian mall or not. Not Columbus (Their downtown shopping mall is empty). Not Dayton. Not Salt Lake City. Not Oklahoma City (probably the closest match for size and economy). Indianapolis has a shopping mall downtown that seems to do ok but I haven't been there enough to really know. St. Louis has a stand alone Macy's but their equivalent of Main Place Mall is closed and being turned into condos. Austin has a new district of small shops that were subsidized with tax dollars but there are also 10,000 condos newly built, under construction or planned. The decline in population and flight to the suburbs, death of the local department stores and change in the way Americans shop killed retail downtown. It won't be back until enough residents or tourists are there to make it viable or our shopping habits change again. No amount of traffic on Main St. will change that.

Reagdless of population loss - Main St. was busy when there were cars. Now it is has been 30 or so years without cars and it is not!

What do we have to lose??? YOU CAN DRIVE DOWN MAIN STREET NOW FOR GOD'S SAKE.

JUST DO IT!

TERRIBLE idea. But if you insist, how about this: for every block of main that goes to the cars, let's turn one block of allen into pedestrian-only. Think about it.

What we have to lose is 100's of millions of tax dollars that could be better put to use somewhere else. Maybe even extending the metro rail out to UB north etc to make downtown even more accesible? Or to offset tax credits for new infill mixed use along the perdestrian mall? Otherwise we are just throwing more money into a false cause and will only end up with a shiney new road with very small bang for the buck.

TexPat10 is right on that people are the key to initiating a lively downtown. If they are living there chances are each person will contruibute to that liveliness more throughout the whole day, and in the off-peak hours. From there things will grow. Elmwood is not a fair comparision as it is a major roadway with no others close by and surrounded by detahced home neighborhood. It would be similar to having the closest streets to Main be Oak and Pearl which is not the case. Most buildings on Main can be accessed for the next street over where vehicles are allowed. Even imagine Main set up to look like an Olmsted Parkway right through the center of downtown with residential mixed use all along it. Bike paths and trains running along the way.

Show me Rochester, Syracuse, etc with booming vehicular Main Streets and shopping and I will concede victory to you. Show me a healthy part of Main st where vehicle traffic still remained relatively near the core. I'm not saying I would approve a pedestrian mall today if it were not already here, but since it is, I rather see a better use of funds to create the dynamic environment we are looking for, not into a false hope. People in their cars will continue to stay in them and drive right by.

Original plans called for the metro to be buried downtown and above ground everywhere else it went. Thus creating a weather sheltered way of moving about Main St year round. Sadly we had no strong leadership at the time, same as today. Some gov't entity has money for us???? Let them do what ever they want ;)

".............announced that traffic would return to the 700 block of Main St. (south of Tupper)......." ummm.......isn't the 700 block the block north of Tupper ??

Not sure I'd go as far as awesome but water does have a draw for people. I was in OKC Memorial Day weekend for the Big 12 baseball championship and the water was a magnet for people in town to enjoy. It was a little spooky and empty on Sunday. I see Canalside as planned as something like Bricktown in OKC and I was struck by how similar Buffalo and OKC are as cities. We could go one better by playing off the water that is so integral to the city and history by carrying the theme deeper into downtown. If I recall correctly the canal in OKC actually replaced a city street when it was excavated. The basements of the buildings were exposed in the process and became the restaurants and bars along the sides of the canal. The new ballpark and headquarters for Sonic add some depth to the Hooters, BW3 type places.

Have you been to Riverwalk in San Antonio? That truly does hop 7 days a week. It is the biggest tourist attraction in the state and it is basically a 2 foot deep ditch with stores and restaurants along the side. So the weather is nicer? They don't have the Falls 20 minutes away.....

Chicago has Michigan Street which is always booming. They have huge sidewalks with lush landscaping and trees. As far as Medians they actually help the flow of traffic, and cut down on accidents. It's not just Buffalo, a lot of cities are doing this too. I'd rather see trees in the middle of the street any day.