Submitted by Hostel Worker…
The lack of bus routes to places is appalling, I’m writing this right now because there’s no easy way for travelers at the [downtown] Hostel to get to the Ralph Wilson Stadium. Game Day express? Doesn’t exist anymore. The best way I could find is to take the 14 (which would run to ECC South, across the street from the stadium, but it doesn’t go that far on Sunday) to the McKinley Mall.
From there, either a disparaging walk through sidewalk lacking sprawl, or shell out more money for a cab to complete the trip. This is just for the stadium though, there isn’t even a bus that goes from downtown, the center of the Greater Buffalo region, to the Amtrak station in Depew. First problem is that it’s in Depew, but let’s pretend that that is something immutable, so how could we get people to the train station from downtown? A bus would work nicely, surely the extensive public transportation system administered by the NFTA could get people from downtown to the train station, right? Well, once upon a time.
The 6 bus no longer continues its righteous path to the train station, but stops short at the Walden Galleria. Now from here wayward travelers have a choice, they can transfer onto bus 46 (but only on weekdays!) to make it to the Depew station but, like a good choose-your-own-adventure book, this brings up yet more options to consider. You can ride in a giant circle, wasting about 40 minutes, until the bus actually stops at the Amtrak station (which isn’t important enough to have times listed on the NFTA schedule) or get off at Walden and Dick Rd. and walk until your quest has been completed. Of course, as the parenthesis indicated, these are only options on weekdays. If you choose the absurd path in life to travel on the weekends, you must either take a cab the entire way from downtown, or take 6 to the Galleria and take a cab from there to complete the journey. But for some lucky, lucky few you may be able to add Exchange St. onto your Amtrak itinerary, dropping another $10 to get from the center of our metropolis to the convenience of the middle-of-nowhere.