There is a story in The News today about the widening of Transit Road and Wehrle Drive. By next year, the section from the I90 to Main Street on Transit will be your basic nightmare of lane closures etc.

And, according to regional transportation officials, the corridor will be overcapacity again in 20 years anyway.

So, if you live or travel out that way much, would you ditch your car for buses or even rail service? I thinking primarily as a way to get to and from work.

I mean, how much wider are those roads supposed to get?

Here is the story:

"After five years or so of relative peace, the tearing-up and subsequent rebuilding of Transit Road — one of Erie County’s most congested and detested commuter corridors — resumed last week.

You practically could feel the shudder.

“It’s coming,” said Clarence Supervisor Kathleen Hallock, a veteran of the nearly two decades already devoted to rebuilding Transit Road.

“It’s a huge project, and there will be major impacts,” added Hallock, who calls herself a “survivor” of the innumerable traffic jams caused by lane closures while the work was done.

This time around, the reconstruction will involve the two miles from Aero Drive, south of the Thruway, to Main Street, a stretch jammed with 44,100 vehicles a day, or 20 percent over capacity.

No major lane closures are anticipated this season, said Susan Surdej, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation, because construction will focus on such tasks as improving drainage, work off to the side of the road. The department also is reconfiguring some side streets to steer traffic away from the intersection of Transit and Wehrle Drive.

Call it the calm before the storm, however.

By the time it is finished in late 2009, the $28.4 million project will transform the Transit- Wehrle commuter corridor. Between the Thruway and Main Street, Transit will have three lanes, instead of two, in each direction and include a raised median and turn lanes with signals at intersections.

Just west of Transit, Wehrle, now a two-lane street rushing toward capacity, will be widened to seven lanes — the size of the Thruway — and will get two leftturn lanes at the intersection to move traffic more quickly.

Next year, Erie County also will launch its own $13 million makeover of Wehrle, expanding it to three lanes from Ellicott Creek to about Ingram Micro and then to five lanes to the state’s seven- lane behemoth.

The state plans to add access roads so drivers more easily can reach businesses in construction zones.

Full story:

http://www.buffalonews.com/101/story/51176.html