Bike Path, Light Rail or Just Let It Be???
Here's an article from the Snooze about the railway ROW owned by the NFTA in Tonawanda. There seems to be 2 main schools of thought ... make a fancy bike path or put in a rail line ... however, current users of the ROW seem to like it the way it is.
ROW
My thought is that I would leave it "as is". Undeveloped spaces like this are valuable for themselves for people who don't always want to be in neat, ordered, developed areas and for urban wildlife that thrive in these environments. It's not like people can't use the ROW for walking and/or biking now since the footpath in the picture accompanying the article shows that they are. It's just not a fancy, manicured path that would cost millions to build and more to maintain. More sensible to me is if the TWP or NFTA mows the ROW three or four times a year to keep the grass down and make walking/biking easier, and preserve the option to use it for rail if the NFTA gets the funds to add rail someday in the future.
Use those millions to do something more useful like putting in bike lanes on busy streets or adding sidewalks along streets that don't have them to make neighborhoods more walkable.
