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Myopic, I disagree you can implement a road and it will serve far more people, can expand, interconnect and support far more people and businesses than a light rail line ever will. With roads business and industries can develop anywhere and aren't tied to the rail lines as in days gone by, they create more taxable land which the rail lines do not.
Roads can carry more people only when they are expanded with sufficient lanes to carry additional traffic. Rail can add cars to expand capacity, or run more frequently to increase usage. Businesses can still develop anywhere whether there are roads or rail adjacent, the difference being rail (or other public transit) allows non car-riders access. As far as "creating more taxable land" that is only valid when looking at undeveloped areas - any road expansions in Amherst are at the expense of taxable land at this point along the rail route.
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Originally Posted by VA Yankee
You sound like all the college age people here who don't want to be creating a carbon footprint but want everyone else to pay for subsidized bus routes so they can go to the mall when they want, if demand from the campus exceeds current bus routes then add another bus, way easier and cheaper. The first trip is $2 dollars no make that at least $4.00(Round trip) if your destination is not within a bus/rail stop then your looking at a cab/Uber or walking to get to your location, odds are the car (which most have already) will not even use $2.00 in gas to run to the mall and back. Good luck finding a job when you have to be near a rail/bus route...
I do not use 99.99% of the roads that exist, and yet I have to subsidize them so other people can go where they want. My point about "first trip" cost is that it is in reality very high as a driver, subsequent trips will of course spread out the cost over time. As far as "finding a job near a bus/rail route" - yeah, that's the point - there's a lot of cost involved in access to jobs that excludes millions of people that maybe shouldn't have to be necessary.
Quote:
Originally Posted by VA Yankee
Amtrak runs in the red period, down here they share CSX rail lines but even if the number of trains increased ridership will not and that's the just the way it is. If Amherst wants the extension that's fine they can enjoy paying for it but based on what posters have stated on CD downtown events are limited and the phrase "ghost town" is often used so we'll see. Start working on the list of sites for all the tourists, beyond the falls there's not much demand to see Niagara Falls or Buffalo. Heck the Metro North & LIRR which have extensive stops and high ridership operates in the red and you think a light rail extension will be a cash cow.....good luck.
"Just the way it is" doesn't mean that it always was or always will be so. Cities were written off entirely 20 years ago, yet things are changing. If service increases, and efficiency increases, then ridership will increase, - not as large as 50 years ago but I fail to see the problem in fixing what's broken rather than just allowing it to fail.
Ontario sees it as worthwhile to expand GO service to Niagara Falls 3 years early. NY State felt it was worthwhile to update all of its Amtrak stations, including allowances for intermodal growth in Buffalo.
No where did I call it a "cash cow" - I said it "may even make money" for excursion trains, not that it would. But it could form a direct pipe to encourage easier travel between TO and Buffalo, dropping folks right off at Exchange Street. Not a silver bullet, but another puzzle piece in building up the area.
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"Let this year be over..."
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Location: Where my bills arrive
19,219 posts, read 17,085,392 times
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Believe what you like seeing your original response to me was over my view that a demand doesn't exist. If a business model for a town would benefit more from a rail line don't you think that more would have implemented that by now? As a commuter source to an urban center I think they can be a good option (depending where you commute to) but the location needs accessible business districts or other transit options, if a person has to take a cab out to a location it's not worth it. People here continue to think that regional shopping should be back downtown, ain't gonna happen that ship sailed decades ago.
We all subsidize roads, schools, public services of varying kinds and we all have parts that we feel we shouldn't be paying for that's life in a democratic society.
Selecting GO Transit as an example does not match up, it represent a metropolitan region of almost 6 million centered on the largest city in Canada (2.7m) it equates better to NYC's MTA than to Buffalo's MSA which has 1.1 million centered on a city of 250k. Ontario extended the train seasonally to the Falls an international tourist designation not that different than the LIRR train run to the Hamptons.
It seems you want an urban centered environment where transit options allow you to live, work and travel without the need to own a car you would be better to relocate to an urban center where it already exists.
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Believe what you like seeing your original response to me was over my view that a demand doesn't exist. If a business model for a town would benefit more from a rail line don't you think that more would have implemented that by now? As a commuter source to an urban center I think they can be a good option (depending where you commute to) but the location needs accessible business districts or other transit options, if a person has to take a cab out to a location it's not worth it. People here continue to think that regional shopping should be back downtown, ain't gonna happen that ship sailed decades ago.
We all subsidize roads, schools, public services of varying kinds and we all have parts that we feel we shouldn't be paying for that's life in a democratic society.
Selecting GO Transit as an example does not match up, it represent a metropolitan region of almost 6 million centered on the largest city in Canada (2.7m) it equates better to NYC's MTA than to Buffalo's MSA which has 1.1 million centered on a city of 250k. Ontario extended the train seasonally to the Falls an international tourist designation not that different than the LIRR train run to the Hamptons.
It seems you want an urban centered environment where transit options allow you to live, work and travel without the need to own a car you would be better to relocate to an urban center where it already exists.
It's not always the case that government is perfectly responsive to demand. I think that's not too crazy to say. You're right that there needs to be something built around the stations such as business districts and that can work in Buffalo's case. Take a look at what's been happening in several other old industrial cities where the downtown area has been seeing strong revitalization and reinvestment including both residential and retail such as Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and even Detroit.
This can work for Buffalo as Buffalo actually has one of the larger contiguous and intact contiguous walkable areas among these cities and Buffalo even has an advantage when it comes to transit as those cities had dismantled their systems so completely that they all had to build dinky streetcar lines. There doesn't need to be a relocation to be in an urban environment where you can have multiple modes of transit as that's something within Buffalo's reach with the huge amount of rail infrastructure already in place and a street grid and remnants of built density that was designed for a dense urban core. Stuffing more people into NYC, Boston, SF, DC, etc. is silly--Buffalo did have a booming urban core in the past and a lot of what we see today are remnants of that past. It doesn't have to be a relic, but a reminder of what can work for Buffalo.
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Believe what you like seeing your original response to me was over my view that a demand doesn't exist. If a business model for a town would benefit more from a rail line don't you think that more would have implemented that by now? As a commuter source to an urban center I think they can be a good option (depending where you commute to) but the location needs accessible business districts or other transit options, if a person has to take a cab out to a location it's not worth it. People here continue to think that regional shopping should be back downtown, ain't gonna happen that ship sailed decades ago.
We all subsidize roads, schools, public services of varying kinds and we all have parts that we feel we shouldn't be paying for that's life in a democratic society.
Selecting GO Transit as an example does not match up, it represent a metropolitan region of almost 6 million centered on the largest city in Canada (2.7m) it equates better to NYC's MTA than to Buffalo's MSA which has 1.1 million centered on a city of 250k. Ontario extended the train seasonally to the Falls an international tourist designation not that different than the LIRR train run to the Hamptons.
It seems you want an urban centered environment where transit options allow you to live, work and travel without the need to own a car you would be better to relocate to an urban center where it already exists.
I think that a demand does exist, as it has been there since the earliest design of the system where it had originally been designed to go to UB North but was shortened for multiple reasons (reduced projected regional growth was one of them). Alternate methods of travel (car, bus) exist, but that doesn't mean that the demand isn't there.
As far as business model driving a rail line, that's not how funding has worked - it was based primarily on federal funding, which has been slim for the last 2 decades, and other regions were first in line.
Regional shopping is not downtown, but Amherst does represent 1 of the 2 largest regional shopping areas. Connection by rail does open this up to people from the city easier. Downtown does still represent the largest jobs center in WNY, and is now also the regions largest medical center. The greatest concentration of jobs, medical, education, population, and the 2nd highest retail will all fall along a single rail line.
I bring up "subsidizing roads" because you brought up "subsidizing rail" - so, to paraphrase what you stated, We all subsidize roads, transit, schools, public services of varying kinds and we all have parts that we feel we shouldn't be paying for that's life in a democratic society.
My GO comment was not as a comparison to Buffalo, but a statement that connectivity to Toronto via rail is now at our doorstep, and by improving connectivity on the US side can improve access between the two cities.
As far as the comment "It seems you want an urban centered environment where transit options allow you to live, work and travel without the need to own a car you would be better to relocate to an urban center where it already exists" - many people in Buffalo ALREADY live/work/travel without a car, and many people with cars also use transit when it meets their needs. The fact that many suburban areas are currently inaccessible or underserved should be all the more reason to consider expansion of service. Of all of the rail possibilities, extension of metro to Amherst arguably complements the existing line and offers the greatest opportunity for improved service and ridership. As I stated earlier, whether that's good enough or not to get federal funding I give it about 30%.
It's been 32 years since the light rail was opened and not even 1 extension was ever built says it all. Actually the current light rail system has been neglected for over 3 decades and the rails, tracks, signal system, electronic systems, cars are outdated, slow, and obsolete which will cost $100's of millions but Buffalo, the County & State are broke,
This is not really newsworthy. There is already bus/train service between Niagara Falls and Toronto, 15 round trips per day. This is just an additional GO train in addition to the VIA Rail service currently available. Now you need to take a bus to Burlington to catch the train, this is a direct train once a day in each direction. It leaves at 5:19 AM and returns at 5:15 PM and is aimed at commuters. So instead of 15 bus/train and 1 train direct, there will be 1 extra train.
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