It's the street of the future, and it's coming downtown.
A seven-block stretch of Washington Street from South Division to Genesee streets will be the guinea pig for the city's first implementation of its new Smart Streets design, to highlight new and alternative ways to not only get downtown but to get around once there.
That means not just using traditional cars, Metro Rail and Metro Bus, but electric vehicles, autonomous shuttles, e-bikes and e-scooters.
"We're looking collectively at mobility in Buffalo and the central business district in particular," said Brendan Mehaffy, Buffalo's economic development commissioner, and executive director of the Office of Strategic Planning. "We're trying to take what we do in Buffalo up to a higher form of sophistication."
The goal is to use technology and adjustable infrastructure to make the street more user-friendly, attractive and welcoming for residents, workers and visitors. The idea is to make it easier to bring people downtown, and then help them move around the central business district once they are there.
"The ultimate goal is to show, in a very real way, all the things that a street is capable of doing," said Ralph DeNisco, senior principal at Stantec, an Alberta-based international engineering services company that has been working with the city on the project. "By pulling all those things into one place, you're showing what's possible in all places."
At the same time, officials will focus first on "getting the basics right," DeNisco said. "All the sidewalks will be nice and even. All the pavement will be new. All the crosswalks will be repainted. All the pedestrian ramps will meet code. All the signals will have push buttons and will work. Basic blocking and tackling. But then on top of that, adding a whole bunch of the elements you can do."
The consultants examined 10.3 miles of downtown using 30 metrics, and evaluated three other downtown streets as alternatives — Court, Pearl and Genesee — but settled on Washington because it offered the most opportunity and visibility in one place.
"It's a transit street. It's a downtown destination street. It connects two of the city's parking ramps, and this is the street that you would use to get up and down. There's large employers that front on Washington Street. Plus it provides a connection to East Buffalo," DeNisco said. "Washington checks more boxes than most other streets in town."
Ultimately, officials hope to use the 2,200-foot stretch of Washington as a test area to see what works and what doesn't, before applying similar features to other streets.
Meanwhile, others may watch Buffalo's experiment, to learn from it. While a few cities like Tulsa or Detroit are trying some elements of smart-streets design, or have started down a similar path as Buffalo, the Stantec consultants said the Queen City may be the first to put it all together and get it implemented — largely because the public and private sectors are working together.
"The goal of this project is to be a recognized national leader," DeNisco said. "Yes, we're learning from other people, but our charge is to be the place that pulls all of that together. Buffalo is trying to be first."
Even better, the city has tens of millions of dollars in funding.
Developer Douglas Jemal, owner of Seneca One tower, and M&T Bank Corp., the tower's anchor tenant, agreed several years ago to contribute to a public infrastructure fund in lieu of getting tax breaks on the building redevelopment. Jemal has now agreed to a similar step with his purchase and redevelopment of the Mohawk Ramp and Simon Electric properties.
"That was a really compelling part of awarding Douglas that project, because he was willing to forgo the tax exemptions he was entitled to and invest that money in public right-of-way," Mehaffy said. "What he understands is it's not just about your building, but everything that happens around your building as well."
The smart-streets design is part of the city's broader Race for Place initiative to make Buffalo more attractive and appealing for both residents and workers to build on the redevelopment and economic growth that the city has experienced in the last 15 years. It also follows Stantec's Future of Mobility forum and report in 2020, and a series of subsequent public meetings and studies over the last three years.
"Whatever we do here is not just for downtown, it's not just for the new developments, it's not just for the new people moving in," DeNisco said. "It's got to benefit the people who are already here and challenged with their everyday existence."
Stantec cited data showing that 61% of people coming to downtown are drivers, with another 19% as passengers and only 11% walking. But once there, 56% get around by walking, with only 34% by car and 1% by Metro Rail.
"Downtown's evolving, not just in Buffalo but around the country," DeNisco said, citing the slowdown in office demand and the rise of residential use, with 2,080 new apartment permits in downtown Buffalo and a 51% growth in downtown population since 2012. "We have to understand how streets evolve to meet that moment. That's what our charge is."
The firm's consultants have been working on the project since February with the city's Office of Strategic Planning, as well as Buffalo Place, the Buffalo Urban Development Corp., Buffalo Civic Auto Ramps, Erie County, the state and the Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council.
"If we want to continue to be a downtown that's growing and advancing, we have to take a look at all options. And smart streets seem to be the way of the future in a lot of cities," said Michael Schmand, executive director of Buffalo Place, the nonprofit organization that runs the downtown business improvement district.
"You can't be afraid of the future," he said. "You have to embrace it, and you have to work with the people who are a lot smarter than we are to figure things out."
But officials still have to determine the governance — who makes the decisions and how, and who executes them. That's expected to include a much bigger and broader role for Buffalo Civic Auto Ramps around mobility in general, rather than just managing the city-owned parking ramps.
Recently, the team from Stantec laid out details of the plan to the public during a forum in the auditorium at Seneca One tower, and then took comments and fielded questions from the dozens of attendees.
Reactions were generally positive.
Emma Hoffritz, who studied sustainable engineering and transportation in school, and now works for the city, said she's "interested in what they're doing downtown" because she lives there, but wondered how much the innovations "apply in the real world."
"It's productive. It's a good innovation to start here," she said, while questioning what she saw as incomplete recommendations. "But where will we be if we're not focused on public transit as well as personal transit?"
Walter Michalski, a 24-year-old city resident and highway engineer at Colliers Engineering & Design, said he liked the idea, but wondered who would be responsible for changing out the movable street infrastructure to switch from eatery by day to parking by night.
"It's a really interesting concept. I'd love to see how it gets implemented," he said. "It'd be cool to make Buffalo a more walkable city, and this would definitely move towards that."
For Dan Piersa, who lives on the East Side but works in the Main Court Building at Lafayette Square, it's the basics that are most important. He bikes to work every day, and has only brought his car downtown once since starting his job in January.
"It's nice to see the protected bike lane, and it seems that they recognize that that's a basic thing to do," said Piersa, 28. "Making downtown available to more people than can just get here by car is an important place to start, and it looks like the project understands that, so it's encouraging."
E-scooters were a particular draw for Darryl Gaines, a member of the NAACP's Housing Committee who is retired from the Erie County Sheriff's Department. He's seen them before in Washington, D.C. "They're everywhere in D.C. I'd like to see something like that in Buffalo," he said.
The city and Stantec will compile the data and feedback, and use it to complete a preliminary "curb management plan" and design for Washington Street by November. City officials will then work with engineers to finalize the details and begin implementing them, with features like e-scooters likely starting to appear next year.
"It's not an option. Buffalo has to do this, or get left behind," Mehaffy said. "We need to do this in order to continue our momentum and growth as a city."
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