Buffalo Rising Online

I can't say I'm surprised. Does anyone know who authorized the removal of the poles? Was that person even aware of discussions and support of transforming these into bike racks? Has anyone contacted Buffalo State or UB to see if this can become part of a student project? At the least we should try to prevent the removal of additional poles. Who do we call at city hall?

City Hall should realize by now the little things matter. How much great press did they get for making a small beach down on the water? And the result was a handful more people down there. Simple, cheap solution to water front access.

Bike racks matter, vendors on the street, small beaches, trees, garbage cans. All important things.

How much could bike racks cost. Cheap or possibly free. And think of how great mayor brown would have looked. "Mayor makes city bike friendly" Thats good for a handful of votes.

We need people in city hall that are more proactive and are able to stop, think and be a bit creative.

If your with a woman in heels who steps in one of these, do you get free parking for a year? Is it too much to assume these will be filled? I know there's too much negativity here, and now I'm contriubuting to it... but how inane is some city manager to send a guy out with a hacksaw, and no immediate plan to fill it in? Are we trying to create work for the billboard-boys ("Injured?...Try walking on Elmwood in heels at night").

Newell, you say this really stinks and I agree - I can smell it from here an hour east. It's especially frustrating as I saw *just last week* here in My Fair City what can be done with the old meter posts with a little creativity and cooperation. Check it out here: http://baswa.org/Totems.htm. In a slice of a rapidly revitalizing section of city near me, through a design competition - and cooperation of all parties - they were turned into public art doubling as bike parking. Not to mention a cool unveiling party! Wish we could take credit for the idea, but it was based on a similar project in Syracuse (those pix are at the same web address).

So the idea leapfrogged from Syracuse to My Fair City, but now we've lost a great opportunity to leapfrog it to Your Fair City. All of our upstate cities need to be smarter about learning from each other - or even shamelessly stealing cool ideas from each other - rather than foolishly cutting off opportunities (literally) at the root.

Let the business owners install bike racks, they are safer than using the parking meters and are less of a liability to the city.

I know that we are an incredibly sensitive group on BRO, especially when it comes to certaini subjects like bike racks and bike friendly streets. It doesn't surprise me that some of you have sand in your crack over the planned removal of the parking meters. So someone in City Hall didn't put everything on hold so satisfy the dreams of a minority of residents. Oh well! Maybe Panos will install a large rack in their new parking lot.

ugh, no one listens. Maybe we are talking to the wrong people. That picture is particularly frustrating, not only did they remove the parking meters, it looks like they left sharp metal edges to pop tires and trip over. Looks like they have actually made the city less bicycle and pedestrian friendly... Way to go guys. Keep up the good work...

great move dudes.

i will call and complain for sure!

Its not just between Utica and Hodge....they are all gone on Elmwood. And they were all just lopped off like that picture, so there are sharp metal stumps sticking an inch or so out of the sidewalk. It looks really bad, but you know that nobody is ever going to fix them.

Oh, and to Newell's observation about timing: this move indeed sucks, with the people coming to town this weekend covering Buffalo and those looking at whether to move or move back to Buffalo. Imagine for a moment that with more foresight, there could have been the opportunity for folks to attend a cool unveiling on Elmwood like I mentioned above, of formerly ugly parking meter posts transformed into public art and bicycle parking. A good story all around: Buffalo unveiling new public art, Buffalo responding to rising gas prices by "rolling out" new bike parking, Buffalo encouraging biking to and within the City's top retail district, Buffalo creatively making the most of its resources and infrastructure, Buffalo's City Hall and community organizations partnering to revitalize the city, Buffalo declaring its aim to become "Bike City USA" (as discussed on BRO recently), etc. But no.

Along these lines, also imagine that with foresight - and a bit of patience - the official ribbon cutting on the new beach could also have happened during Buffalo Homecoming, with Newell in the conga line to acknowledge the role of BRO in launching that project. What a great story for out-of-town media and all the visitors: Buffalo's young progressives are now staying and working to revitalize the city, instead of heading off in search of greener pastures. But no: the picture is largely the same middle-aged guys in suits - with the local fishwrapper vaguely mentioning that "someone" gave the beach idea to a councilmember.

For several days, Buffalo Homecoming shines a focused spotlight on Buffalo's potential and revitalization like no other happening in the community. In the future, instead of dumb moves and bad timing on the part of myopic City government, with some advance planning and vision there could be a number of projects in the pipeline that would show off smart planning, wise and creative use of existing resources, community/government collaboration, and progressive ideas for revitalization --- a series of cool ribbon cuttings and unveiling parties which would have everyone wanting to come be part of it, and spread the word.

That would go a long way to combat the image portrayed by Al Jazeera and others of Buffalo as a post-industrial basket case. City Hall, please wake up and get it together.

How about the business owners act in a proactive way and put up some bike racks in front of their places? Sure, it would be great if the city would do it, but they didn't, so deal with it. Obviously the jagged pieces of metal will be leveled out and filled...hasn't anyone seen the other areas of the city where this has been completed, or was this picture only used as a way to inflame the (not so) masses?

I'm not from Buffalo, but I am a cyclist - so I empathize - but while searching for art bike racks I found these, which seem like a good solution to your parking meter problem (if you can catch them in time). Custom art optional.

http://commuter.typepad.com/commuterpageblog/2007/01/bike_parking_or.html and here http://www.creativemetalworksllc.com/Pages/production_racks_divs.html#

Hmmmm, it is a shame but it seems that people on this site would rather complain than do anything about it....nobody thought to call the city's parking enforcement people to ask about the fate of the old meters? Is it really that suprising that they took them down? Any one of us could have called, stopped the removal, and spearheaded a plan to raise the funds for bike rack conversion.

Another thing is that the city does deserve some of the blame, but do you really expect them to lead this charge? Granted they may seem like an easy scapegoat and they are, but where's the business community, neighbors, EVA to raise the issue?

Next time get away from your computers and do something. We're all at fault. Myself included.

This isn't about being proactive or not but that it would have been an easy fix to convert the poles to bike rack usage and by their removal it is going to cost anyone even more money in the end to do the work themselves, making it even more difficult to happen. This was just a really shortsighted move by the city without excuse.

As a business owner you can't just install something in front of your building. Be it a bike rack, patio, awnings, signs, chairs/tables ect. In order for an owner to just "install" a bike rack out front they need to get aproval from the city. At best thats two to three months of meetings, with zoning, city council, planning, ect.....you'll need to submit drawings. All of which is time consuming and it will cost money. It aint as easy as it sounds.

And for those that say you should have "called city hall." Before you make that comment. Try calling city hall. Tell them what your complaint or idea is......see how far you get. Tell me how much hair you have left afterwards.

Our politicians here and our governmental process here SUCKS!!!

valid points rydog but at the same time often cars and parking meters can coexist just fine. A bike locked to the sidewalk side of the parking meter is no close to a car door than the meter itself so I don't think it would make much of an issue. Plus these are measured and placed to allow car doors to open.

Also the doors are only a problem if the car has more than one passenger... all to often that isn't the case so the drivers are still going to always be getting out into traffic either way. Plus not every meter would need ot be converted, 50% 33% anything would be better than nothing. All in all I don't think those are enough of a reason to throw away the resource that existed to have to spend more money, energy, and natural resources putting more in. Aren't we supposed to be saving money and natural resources. This is like typical American consumerism. throw this away and buy new without any thought to reuse, or recycling.

I emailed him does that count?

I lived in Buffalo during the fall of 2007 and early winter 2008. I used my bicycle to get around the city rain, shine or snow. I was very frustrated with the lack of infrastructure for cyclists. Granted, I am comparing my Buffalo experience to cycling in Toronto where I commuter cycled for many years, but nonetheless, I was surprised by the absence of basic necessities for cyclists both on the streets and outside stores. Without sidewalk bicycle racks, I regularly had to search for trees or hydro-electric poles that I could hitch my bike to. Aside from Wegman's on Amherst and the Lex Co-op, no other stores which I visited provided bicycle racks for shoppers...Tops, Rite-Aid, CVS, Walgreen's, Target, Wilson Farms, coffee shops...and many more. For cyclists coming to Buffalo from any other city that has a greater awareness of urban bike culture, the Buffalo biking experience, regrettably, can be nothing but disappointing.

Lets stop paying city taxes. I will pay for my user fee, police/fire, and school...everything else is a waste and duplicated for the region. When are we going to wake up.

yeah the buffalo news covered the big stories, the whole basis of BRO is to cover the smaller more personal issues in the city and hopefully attempt to spur some debate and interest in bettering the situation.

As far as I'm aware, the city did what it said it was going to do. They never actually agreed to keep the poles in place.

Real Question is "Are the PEOPLE of Buffalo Bike Friendly?"

I'm a competitive cyclist, no I haven't won any crazy titles, but I have fun competing in local events (www.buffalobicycling.com) so I can move on my bike when I want to. I was riding up Wadsworth the other day towards Symphony Circle @ a little under 25 mph (almost the damn speed limit) when some Jacka$$ made a left onto Wadsworth right in front of me and then cranked the wheel over hard and almost hit my front wheel with his bumper. I had to hit the breaks. Oh yeah there were no cars coming the other way so this guy had plenty of room to be in the other lane but chose to swerve in front of me

I was pretty mad and caught up to this "gentleman" at the 1st light. I should have left well enough alone, but I told him to be careful and that he had just cut me off. He said "no kidding, get your damn bike off the road!!"

Completely dumbfounded we both too off from that light at the same time. He swerved his truck into the bike lane at me so hard that he almost could not recover and almost hit the parked cars himself. I was lucky, I was not hurt, but my hand scrapped down the side of this guys SUV hard enough to burn a hole in my glove!

I just want to take a second to remind everyone IT IS ILLEGAL TO RIDE YOU BIKE ON THE SIDEWALK. IT IS DANGEROUS TO YOURSELF AND PEDESTRIANS TO DO THIS. BIKES, BY LAW, HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS TO THE ROAD AS CARS. I am no "critical mass" guy and think that they tend to make more people mad then do good, but really how do we get people to be OK with sharing the road? How do we also get people to stop riding their damn bikes on the side walk? How many times have you almost been hit by some guy tooling around on his mountain bike on the side walk? I really hate that.

sbrof, Good points on both. It's been a while but I don't remember there being any of this stuff in driver's ed. so it guess it is the State of New York that is not bike friendly...

sbrof, Good points on both. It's been a while but I don't remember there being any of this stuff in driver's ed. so it guess it is the State of New York that is not bike friendly...

From City Hall "If your complaint relates to removing obsolete parking meter poles, which some people occasionally use to fasten their bikes to with locks, you'll be happy to know that we are in the process of implementing a comprehensive, uniform effort to install bicycle racks throughout the city's commercial districts and other high traffic areas (e.g., downtown core). As an avid cyclist myself, I am keenly aware of riders' desire to find places in the city to lock their bikes. As an Administration, we will create a program that will support that activity and hopefully encourage more people to ride their bikes." "Cutler,Peter"