I wonder if other readers noted as I did the quote of NFTA Chairman Gregory Stamm that "we'll do anything in our power to service the needs of our students... we would clearly run it (a trolley system) and do it well," ("Inter-campus light rail project resurrected," Dec. 4) I am impressed at this statement, a patent falsehood, for it was just last summer that NFTA reneged very late on a very popular deal, supported uniformly by "commuters" like myself and advertised prematurely for some kind of discounted student pass. That disappointment, typical of living in this city, was presumably Stamm's accomplishment. Clearly, NFTA won't do "anything in (its) power" because it didn't given a real shot at it; I question their ability to "do it well," because clearly, they can't keep the escalators working in their stations. How dare Stamm insult us with a (recently-proven) empty statement of commitment to "our students."
Last year, The Spectrum did a fine piece on Elmwood and good off-campus living. It seems that many students are still wholly unaware of Elmwood, and those who know fall in love with it, as I did, and thus I moved there. Thanks to NFTA, I have made it to North in as little as a half-hour; my general praise, however, is reserved for public transportation which I'd never used regularly until getting to Buffalo, not for NFTA in particular.
Some kind of light-rail will never be built on account of exactly that which concerned Supervisor Mohan said in the article, Buffalo isn't there yet. The school would do much better, in the spirit of reviving past good ideas, to build an underground people-mover between Ellicott and the Spine ?Ae? la those found at many airports. As "it's always a cost-benefit question" according to Shibley in the article, with which I agree, UB needn't even waste a year on studying the non-existent viability of light-rail among the campuses. A utilitarian mission of long-term cost-cutting while cutting commute times for the largest number of students means linking Ellicott and the Spine.
It was outrageous in my mind to even devote the front page to such an ill-placed fiction. It's so Buffalo.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
