You would think, that in this stage of the game, “traffic calming” and “road diet” would actually mean something to The City of Buffalo.
Apparently, The City still has a lot to learn, and I’m betting that the planners that “redesigned” N. Division and S. Division are either A) ready to retire and went to planning school in Moses-age, or… well, there is no other “or”, because even a newbie planner would know that this street plan stinks.
What we’re looking at here is not a problem of Rookie 101 – it stems from someone who has been lurking around this city for years and years. This is not someone who has been schooled in best practice urban infrastructure, it’s someone who simply said,” Well, a bus has got to go over there… and I guess we need a bike lane [pointing to a diagram], and then three lanes for cars, because the DOT says that a lot of people come and go in their cars…”
Honestly, there is no other planner in the country that would go for this plan – it’s a mishmash of all sorts of dismal traffic issues designed around three lanes for cars. This concept literally pits pedestrians vs. cars. Years ago (in 2007) I called this exact scenario “frogger”, on this same set of streets (see here). Sorry, but we’ve been looking at these two urban “thoroughfares” for years, waiting for the day that best practice traffic calming would come into play. And we get this?
It’s as if opportunity knocked… and nobody answered.