5. One-Way Streets
I will credit the city for restoring a number of downtown’s one-way streets to two-way traffic, but there is still a number of remaining one-ways.
Probably the worst is what I dub the “Elm-Oak speedway.” This twin artery consisting of two one-way streets (opposite direction of course) is fed by traffic coming off the 33 expressway, en route to the I-190, and vice-versa. Traffic engineers obviously planned this as a de-facto connector between the two highways. The traffic lights along these streets are geared for a constant flow of vehicular traffic. Pedestrians, beware.
I guess one could argue that there are few uses on these streets that attract pedestrians. Indeed an entire strip of tacky, one-story, suburb-style urban renewal office buildings was built between the dual arterials, rendering this section of downtown a no-go zone for those on foot. So why bother tinkering with this auto-friendly configuration? Well, there have been plans to convert some of the surviving buildings along this stretch into lofts and apartments. If these streets ever wish to become places worth taking a stroll and spending money, the one-way speedways must be nixed. Otherwise who the hell would want to live next to a noisy expressway? Remember what happened to Humboldt Parkway?
4. Chippewa District
Yes, the revitalization of West Chippewa Street has helped bring people downtown once again. Even if for one purpose—to get ****faced, it’s still an overall plus for the city. But man, the people who patronize those bars leave much to be desired.
You don't remember, but this is where you threw up last weekend
Chippewa’s clientele primarily includes tasteless suburban trash, frat-type meatheads, and 30-40ish professionals who still think they are young. On this three-block strip we get a monoculture of noisy bars that spin the same tired Top 40 booty-shaking tunes and pander to the shallow culture of suburban jocks and fake-boobed hussies.
By day, Chippewa is a quiet street with a primary use of small offices above the sleeping bars. By nightfall, on weekends, the street caters to some theater district patrons, soon to be replaced an hour or two later by the younger, sloppy drunk crowd.
So what is so horrible about all of this? Not a whole lot, except the lesson of trying to avoid single-use districts. At night Chippewa qualifies as a single-use district because just about every establishment on the street offers the same use and caters to the same crowd. Take a busy district at night like Greenwich Village in NYC for example. Its major streets are filled nearly every night, with as many people, if not more than Chippewa on a typical weekend evening. But each street in the Village has a mix of bars, restaurants, coffee shops, retail stores, small emporiums, and apartments. Not a single street is occupied primarily by bars.
If downtown Buffalo is to eventually build up a sizable population, streets like Chippewa will have to diversify and accommodate residential and retail uses. City planners and officials should be doing their best to lure popular retail outlets onto the street and the general area. This could turn the Chippewa area and theater district into a 24-hour destination, which would be much better than an urban theme park, only active on weekend nights.
3. The Amtrak Station
The miserable excuse for an Amtrak station we have downtown looks like a tool shed about to collapse upon itself. The long and short of it is that train travel no longer makes sense in America. For long distance travel we take airplanes. For short and moderate distance we drive cars. Those too poor to fly or drive go Greyhound. Enough said. America has a passenger rail system even the Bulgarians would laugh at. It’s almost as slow as driving or taking a bus and it is sometimes twice as expensive as flying Jet Blue. The federal government seems hell bent on choking Amtrak’s funding and letting it die a slow, painful death. Buffalo once had a grand Art Deco masterpiece of train station, which now stands dormant as a rotting mass in a rotting East Side neighborhood. What we get is a rotting tool shed for a downtown train station on Exchange Street, right in the backyard of The Buffalo News.
2. The Waterfront
We all know our waterfront sucks. Let’s forget for a second about the outer harbor (that vast expanse of scrub land under the skyway and along route 5) and concentrate on the section directly abutting downtown. Thanks to the ugly presence of the I-190, there are few downtown streets which connect to the scenic portion of the waterfront. There we have the Erie Basin Marina which offers some nice scenic views but is surrounded by parking lots and has poor pedestrian connectivity with downtown. The rest of the waterfront is marred by a strange mix of isolated luxury condos, subsidized housing towers and suburb-like office parks (Adelphia and Channel 7 News are two of the occupants). What in the hell were they thinking here? Just about every function of our waterfront caters to automobile-dominated uses that one could find anywhere in the twenty gazillion suburban moonscapes that scar this nation. The biggest problem here overall is the lack of connectivity.
On the subject of the outer harbor, most of these “plans” I have seen are pure rubbish. Most of them call for creating a mix of high rise-luxury condos and offices in some sort of ecotopian park-like setting. Let’s first not forget that the outer harbor’s soil is still contaminated by a number of heavy metals. Secondly, if downtown has enough problems retaining office tenants (around a 40% office vacancy rate) and attracting new residents, who the hell would think that businesses and home-seekers will suddenly flock downtown in huge numbers if a bunch of towers were erected overnight on the waterfront? Dream on.
Our local politicians have little ability to think beyond the typical silver-bullet megaprojects. They make for cute soundbites on the evening news; that’s about it. Fixing an ailing city requires a gradual, long-term sequence of small steps. It means luring in a delicate combination of small businesses, retail chains, offices, places to live. It means working on one neighborhood at a time or even one block at a time. The changes add up slowly.
Our politicians lack the will, the patience, and a genuine understanding of how cities function. Sometimes I don’t think they even care. Whatever makes flashy headlines, gets them reelected and pleases their moneyed friends is what flies. Our waterfront is a case in point. My recommendation: Rip down the 190 and restore a connective street pattern to the waterfront. Likeliness of this to happen? When Red Bull will actually give you wings.
1. The Suburbs
If they never existed, I wouldn’t have had to go through the trouble of writing this article.