By Gladys Gifford, President of Citizens for Regional Transit:
The sponsors of the Cars on Main Street project prepared an Environmental Assessment (EA)1 that was submitted to the Federal government in order to release funding.
The EA, as submitted in 2009, should have addressed all the possible impacts that this project will have on the WNY population.2 Did it? Or are there unintended consequences that the sponsors have ignored?
For instance:
Air quality
Recently, I observed a woman in a wheelchair board a Metro Rail car at one of the downtown stops. Her wheelchair was equipped with an oxygen tank, but she was not using the oxygen. She rode to one of the underground stations. As she prepared to exit, she put her oxygen tube in place to use as she exited the train.
I wondered: didn’t this woman need her oxygen when she was in downtown Buffalo and traveling in the above ground portion of Metro Rail? Clearly, she did need her oxygen later when she was exiting through an underground station and heading for her destination.
This simple but telling observation illustrates a point. The air is clean in downtown Buffalo, the consequence of having no motor vehicles on Main street for over 25 years.
The EA analysis of air quality for the project relied on the general average for the region, based on measurements taken at three sites in Erie County that are remote from the project area. No sampling of the air quality in downtown Buffalo was done; therefore, there was no realistic basis for claiming that there was no significant impact on air quality in downtown Main Street. Did project sponsors realize that this project will expose downtown residents and workers and visitors to levels of air pollution not experienced in downtown Buffalo since 1984?
Safety and liability
The next time you walk around a Metro Rail car in downtown Buffalo, notice the immovable couplers at either end of Metro Rail cars; in the event of a collision, an automobile would be crushed.
Also worth noting is the fact that motor vehicles are not allowed under the HSBC tower, as a result of 9-11-01. The completed Cars on Main Street project would remove that ban.
As for liability, Metro Rail train operators are responsible for up to four rail cars. The momentum of such a moving train means that the operator cannot stop suddenly, nor can the train swerve to avoid a crash with a motor vehicle. Such a crash will happen, despite the best efforts of the city and the NFTA to control the movement of vehicles. When that happens, who is liable?
Disability requirements
The project degrades access for the disabled. Elimination of the Theater Station reduces access for the disabled to the whole transit system. Furthermore, the project requires new stations for the remainder of downtown Buffalo in order to accommodate motor vehicles driving on the railbed. The new stations would feature an attached hydraulic-operated Bridge Ramp for disabled access. This Bridge Ramp would be a steel plate that would be lifted in place as a train approaches. This design has never been tested for operation in harsh weather conditions.
Legal issues
The EA concluded that this project had no significant impact on minority and low-income population. This conclusion is flawed, and flies in the face of the evidence.
The EA identified a residential population in the analysis area that consisted of 585 people in 313 households, as of 2001. This small population was evenly split racially, and half had a household income below the poverty line. None of these households were interviewed by the sponsors to assess the impacts of the project on their lives.
Furthermore, the EA did not examine impacts on transit riders, the majority of whom are minority women earning less than $25,000, according to a survey of transit riders done by the Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council in 2002. Removal of the Theater Station plus mixing vehicular traffic with Metro Rail cars will result in disruptions and delays to the riders served by Metro transit. Since the Cars on Main Street project impacts the whole transit system, the question of “environmental justice” as required by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should have been addressed.
Let’s do Cars on Main Street right– revise the design, so that all who arrive in downtown Buffalo are well-served by all modes of travel.