Extend Metro Rail

While Becky and I were walking along Elmwood Avenue during the Arts Festival yesterday I came across one of the social services desks that was staffed by Citizens for Regional Transit. I picked up a pamphlet titled "Extend Metro Rail".

I've been an advocate of extending the rail line since it was first constructed back in the 1980's. It was inadequately and poorly planned and executed from the very beginning.

At that time the most obvious flaw was not running the rail line from the UB South Campus on Main Street to the UB North Campus in Amherst. The reason for not extending the line from downtown to Amherst was blatantly and obviously racists. There were people at the time who said that they had moved to the suburbs to get away from urban problems and they did not want those problems coming into their community via a rail line from the city. To hell with the UB students. This pamphlet calls for the extension of the line to unite the urban campus with the suburban campus. 

They call for an Airport Extension of the rail line. That seems like an obviously positive thing to do to have the rail line go to the airport. I know it made a big difference when they did that in Philly a number of years ago. Here the existing line going to Canalside would be extended through the Cobblestone District and eastward above ground to Larkinville, Central Terminal, Thruway Mall, Walden Galleria and then to the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport. Seems like the obvious thing to do.

Another line extension would go south to the football stadium and stop at the Botanical Gardens along the way. They also support a line going south to Hamburg and stopping at the Fairgrounds.

And then there is the other obvious extension going north that would connect Buffalo to Tonawanda and then Niagara Falls. It would be amazing to be able to get some of the millions of people who visit the Falls to be able to quickly and conveniently get to Buffalo.

I was always interested in the new rail line in Buffalo which was probably because I grew up in a city with an extensive public transportation system which I used at a very young age. I took trolleys, buses and the subway all over the city.

In Buffalo I took the new subway rail line to work downtown in the early to mid nineties when I was working at the Central Library. I would walk over to Main Street from our house on Shirley and take the train to Lafayette Square. I liked being able to read during my commute to work. It would have been nice to have been able to take the train to the UB North Campus when I was in graduate school if they had extended the rail line as in the original plans before the racists nixed the project.

We live about three blocks from the rail line here in Parkside and over the years I have used it many times to go downtown to baseball games, hockey games, the basketball tournaments, concerts and other events like the beer tastings. It was always a nice option to have instead of fighting the traffic and parking problems. It would have been very effective if they had extended the rail line south to the football stadium.

For many years Becky fought the never ending battle with a long congested commute to work at the UB North Campus and the awful inadequate parking situation there. It would have been a much better work experience if she would have been able to just walk over to the rail line and take the train to work every day.

Over the years I have been taking the rail line down to the medical center for my semi-annual brain scans. It is just so much easier.

So it was interesting to look at this pamphlet that I grabbed at the festival yesterday. Everything on it should have been done 20 to 30 years ago. Too bad there are so many narrow minded people living in Erie County.