Buffalo Rising Online

You know what would be great there instead of an empty building? A bank.

Geeeez, enough with the bike crap. All the Boyz just love a giant. Makes them wonder.......

I bike all the time to and from places around the city and totally agree with Lorna but a quick story was my father. He started a couple summers ago commuting from his riverside home to downtown for work. Riding along the bike path, down Niagara. He isn't someone who hides in one section of town or another and probably knows more about the ins and outs of the city than most but even to him, riding to and from work many days showed him a lot of what he didn't notice before. Life along streets that he didn't realize existed. You hear people talking, music playing, the rumble of tires the wind in the trees. There are a lot of little but wonderful aspects of places that people often don't realize.

Bikiing is not such a novel idea when it is -9 degrees with snow and sleet pelting you in the face. Unless you are a panhandler on Elmwood riding a huffy ten speed.

Having said that, I am impressed to find out that Evans is moving to Elmowood as well. There will be several bank branches on Elmwood. that is a good sign and is good for the community. Hopefully they can finance some retail stores.

Elmwood desperately needs a Gap or Old Navy....somthing along those lines to start out with.

The advantage of Grant Street is that prices are still low enough for a lower margin business to own it's location. That can be a savings over having to carry a blood sucking, boutiqueified Elmwood landlord's profit margin in one's overhead.

I bought a building on Grant because I see it's potential to be the Elmwood of 1979 when I bought my first house on Lexington. A place where one can get services and goods they really need, rather than a retail street dominated by things I can easily live without.

My Toronto model for Grant is Gerrard East, the little India neighborhood, without the pigeons. On Gerrard one finds neighborhood services, an ethnic Indian grocery, restaurants, immigrant owned businesses, not chain stores. On Grant it is Somali Star and a coffee shop, G&L Flooring, Guercio's, the locally owned pharmacy, the Hallal market, Russ's Bakery et al. This is a mix of products and services which give one reasons to keep coming back.

You want alternatives....then put the NFTA (bus and light rail), the Port of Buffalo, the Airport, the NYSDOT, the GBNRTC and Rail under a single consortium. Demand that the gas tax be distributed for light rail, bus, bicycles and commuter rail as well as for transportation for cars and trucks. You want alternatives...then demand local control and local priorities for all local projects to be decided locally instead of albany or dc! You want alternatives....put the public oversight into all these albany dictatorial agencies.

Your never going to get rid of cars and biking is never going to be a year round alternative. However, what we Buffalonians need to be is pragmatic and realistic in funding all alternatives. Right now the only real funding we have is for cars, trucks and airplanes....so those are the only viable alternatives. Yet everyone knows that there are worthwhile alternatives that need funding and consideration and inclusion.

Well, as someone's who's wrote an academic work on the development of a bicycle program in Buffalo based around the notion of commuting to work, I can only say GOOD LUCK WITHN THAT? At every turn, from evbery possible person, agency, department and group, it is seen as laughable, impracticle, and expensive to plan for bicycles in an aging community where hardly anyone rides when it's nice out, much less in the cool and cold months.

Save the rants about the environment, energy, etc. I've made th arguments, fought the fight and took the ridicule defending the idea. It's great that people commute on two wheels. But the reality is that in today's hyper fast world, it's only an option for a microscopic portion of the population and that doesn't make politicians and private employers to invest money in overcoming the Three Ss... Sweat, Safety and Security.

Sweat: Getting to work all swaety and hot and needing an at-work shower and lockerroom. Safety: On road and off road bicycle lanes and paths to ensure a safe commute Security: A secure place to leave your bicycle while at work.

It's the few and the daring who do!

As a deeply impoverished city, transportation by bicycle is an obvous affordable resource to improve quality of life for poor households.

Sadly, poor minorities too often view biking as an admission of poverty, when it could empower them and stretch sharply limired disposable income. And it would improve the grim heath profile in poor communities.

Minority leaders, & all city leaders, should promote biking as "cool'.

One improvement is definitely needed. Without bike racks on busses, it is too often a gamble to bike any distance. In winter, especially one leg of the trip could become untenable.

I now live in Mpls where every bus has a bike rack, making it simple to bike one way, or part of one way & bus the rest.

For the elderly in Mpls, it becomes extremely cheap to run errands or visit freinds. The non-rush hour fare is 50 cents & a transfer can be used in all directions for 2 1/2 hours.

Bflo needs bike racks on all buses.

Thinker. I think you pretty much sum up all this noise regarding the bicycle. They are great in summer and on vacation, but not a viable form of transportation for enough of the population to justify public expenditure in our region, the answer is simply no.

I say this fully cognizant of the destruction the vehicle causes on our lives, health and well-being. Nothing has been more destructive to us as a society, than maybe say the spread of liberal curriculum in higher education.

Wholelottajibba - if I take that route, I don't think I will make it there alive! What are you trying to say?

Good point, if Elmwood could attract an Armani or Apple store, I would have suggested that.

What's so difficult about giving options? When redoing a road, add a bike lane. What's wrong with giving people options? I had my most freedom riding my bmx prior to getting my first car. I never had to worry about gas money, I always noticed a lot of cool things along the way that I could always easily stop and check out, and I remained healthy doing it.

I still ride my bike in the summer. As said above, it gives you chance to be a part of your surroundings and interact with them and other people. Transit road exists for those that want an isolated life in a steel box wandering amongst asphalt praries. Why not develop Buffalo to give an alternate option to what the county has way too much of already?

I always thought the old rail right-of-ways would make an excellent bicycle "highway" system. I used to use them extensively crossing from neighborhood to neighborhood as a kid. Even in my early 20's when I lived in the Village of Lancaster and rode my bike back and forth to the Gold's Gym on Seneca near Harlem in West Seneca I mostly used abondoned railway lines.

Actually it's buy local, sell global....keep your money here and bring outsider's money in ;)

I would argue that we spent the last 20 years throwing money away into national and international companies. The big suburbanization that the region went through not only strained our resources but sent much of the money out to corporate headquarters in NYC, Atlanta, Tennessee etc etc. We need to work with the global economy to sell as many products as we can to other markets. But once that money gets here. We need to keep it as long as possible. We watched the global economy ripe the heart and soul out of our economy because on the global scale of things we are not that important.