The total cost of materials is ~$20,000, paid for by the New York State Department of Health’s Creating Healthy Schools and Communities grant. 

The City of Lackawanna and GObike Buffalo have partnered to install temporary bicycle facilities on Ridge Road as a demonstration prior to committing significant capital expenditures. National trends, data, research, and testimony indicate streets that are redesigned to slow traffic and improved mobility options yield significant benefits such as improved personal health, safety, and welfare as well as bolstering community vibrancy.

A lane just for bicycles that uses separation, hardscaping, and vertical delineation to buffer people on bikes from people in motor vehicles.

No, you cannot drive in the protected bike lane. You may drive through it as you cross through an intersection or driveway. When passing through the bike lane, you must yield to a bicyclist in the lane or a pedestrian in the crosswalk.

Because sidewalks are for pedestrians, not bicyclists. An average pedestrian moves at about 3 mph while a cyclist moves at an average 12 mph. In order to keep people safe regardless of their transportation mode, it is important to provide dedicated facilities to each group. In many municipalities in New York State, biking on the sidewalk is illegal due to the risks it presents to the cyclist and pedestrians.

You are correct; narrow travel lanes slow down vehicles to encourage travel speeds at the posted speed limit. We believe this to be a benefit to our community as we have more eyes on our businesses, it creates a safer environment for children and families, and encourages visitors to travel to our community.

From a national perspective,  WNY has little congestion. The traffic analysis suggests it will not vary significantly from current conditions. This “road diet” project is a temporary pilot project so we’ll be able to determine a definite answer. National studies show bicycle infrastructure does not increase travel times and, in fact, may often reduce them. We’ve seen this locally as well on streets such as Delaware Avenue in the City of Buffalo- the traffic diet allowed more cars to travel through the corridor and improved safety for all modes. In conjunction with this project,  the City of Lackawanna will be upgrading the traffic signals on Ridge Road at Electric Avenue and South Park Avenue to a high-resolution state of the art detection and control system.

Bicycles are legal on the streets, however, historically the street has primarily been designed to only accommodate automobiles and large trucks. Bike lanes provide opportunities for healthy, fun recreation (biking), support the local economy, calm traffic, and improve street safety for all road users.

As noted above, the older street designs do not properly support safe and comfortable bicycling which discourages proper and safe bicycle use. While we don’t have bicycle counts for Ridge Road, neighboring corridors have an estimated 200 bicyclists per day.

For protected bike lanes, this allows us more efficient use of the pavement width by building one system of protection rather than two and enables a safer bicycling environment.

On-street parking on both sides of the street can be an inefficient use of the public street benefiting only a small minority of street users per linear foot. Being a public street, we believe it should support the highest number of people needing it for mobility. Greater access to businesses is provided by increased visibility from pedestrians,  bicyclists, and slower moving traffic versus just pass-through traffic. Greater health outcomes are also improved by increasing personal mobility.