Driving around downtown Buffalo on any given weekend can be infuriating. Especially when visitors come from other cities that have managed to tweak their traffic signals to reflect the changing traffic patterns – from heavier throughout the week to lighter on the weekends.
While poorly timed traffic signals is still an ongoing issue in many areas of the city, getting caught at red light after red light when there are no other cars at intersections is nonsensical. Other cities have figured it out… why not Buffalo? One BRO reader by the name of Noah Rothschild was visiting Buffalo recently and summed up the situation perfectly:
I live in Chicago but I’m a proud Buffalonian who visits home frequently and just this past weekend was in the Queen City.
I took my wife downtown to check out the construction at Canalside and Lafayette Hotel at 9am on Sunday. Downtown was dead, no surprise, but I was utterly annoyed at the city’s traffic flow and light timing. Not only is downtown un-navigable with too many one-way streets but the worse part was that none of the street lights were flashing red or yellow.
In our meandering tour of Buffalo we spent probably 60 percent of our time sitting at red lights at empty intersections.
Does anyone else agree that on weekends or outside of “business hours” the City should open up the flow by turning traffic lights into “stop signs” with flashing lights?
They do it in Chicago!
Anyways, it really kind of ruined our tour and I’m as big a proponent of Buffalo as they come.