Welcome

I've lived most of my life near Buffalo, NY. In contrast to our state's namesake city, most people in metro Buffalo drive everywhere. Part of the problem is the way in which our metro area has been constructed since World War II. A lot of people still live in traditional urban neighborhoods, in the City of Buffalo and in places like Niagara Falls, the Tonawandas, Kenmore, and Lockport. Over the decades, however, more and more people have moved to newly constructed places where the only option for getting from point A to point B has been with use of a car.

Unfortunately, these newly constructed places are often unneeded. Though metro Buffalo sustained modest growth throughout the 1960s and 1970s while the population of the city was shrinking, the 1980 census made it evident that the metro area population was beginning to shrink as well. By the year 2020, Erie and Niagara counties, which make up the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) are projected to lose more than 63,000 additional people.

It's time to think beyond the car. The total cost of car ownership is significant depending on where you live. Car ownership is expensive for our municipal, county, and state governments as well, who are forced to spend a great deal of money from our shrinking tax base on the maintenance of our aging and underused infrastructure. We have to think about the future and the effects that cars have on the atmosphere, and that roads and impervious surfaces have on the water quality, as was made evident last week.

The goal of this blog is to discuss solutions to the auto dependency that plagues Erie and Niagara counties. We need to look at curbing suburban growth, modifying our suburbs to make them friendlier to other forms of transportation, and repairing our traditional neighborhoods, among many other things. Stay tuned.