‘Urgency’ requested for more safety measures, better street design after cyclist deaths in Buffalo | Local News

Sara Rogers, a jazz musician and new music therapist, died June 17 on South Park Avenue after she and two good friends ended up struck by a vehicle. Law enforcement reported the driver could have endured a “clinical emergency” prior to the crash that killed the 29-year-previous Rogers and wounded the other people.

One more bicyclist was killed Thursday evening on Abbott Highway close to Kenefick Avenue in South Buffalo in a strike-and-operate crash, Buffalo law enforcement confirmed Friday. The driver was spotted in West Seneca, taken into custody and charged with driving while intoxicated, according to police. The victim has not been identified.

“These are tragedies involving individuals occupying public areas not intended in a way to continue to keep them safe and sound,” mentioned Ashley Smith, deputy director for GObike Buffalo.

Basically portray bicycle lanes on existing streets has not been the reply, either.

“It truly is challenging to reconcile that ‘paint is progress’ when we are owning vigil just after vigil for bicyclists killed by reckless drivers,” explained Seamus Gallivan, co-founder of Gradual Roll Buffalo, which joined GObike June 27 to maintain a vigil for Rogers. About 600 bicyclists took aspect in that Slow Roll, Gallivan stated.

The two bicyclist deaths come at a time when cycling has boomed nationally as a healthy activity. The Buffalo location has skilled its own increase, but info displays it really is weighted toward trail and pathway use, not traversing town streets, Smith claimed.

In 2019, four of the major 10 web pages with the best volume of bicyclists had been industrial streets, with several connecting employees to downtown Buffalo. The details, compiled manually by GObike, shifted substantially in 2020, as the Outer Harbor path, Shoreline Trail by Niawanda Park and the Clarence bicycle route led the demand. Nine of the 10 optimum-quantity bicycle places ended up either paths or trails. 

Urban measures to raise safety for bicyclists and pedestrians, which include the Niagara Avenue Cycle Monitor completed previous 12 months, continue on to unfold, but not at the velocity and frequency advocates would like. 

Smith mentioned GObike and the larger sized Buffalo bicycling community have absent through phases of grief as fatal crashes seem to be to outpace done basic safety attempts.

“It produces a level of urgency to make these shifts,” she claimed.

In accordance to point out information acquired by GObike, there have been 1,622 bicycle and pedestrian-involved crashes in the Metropolis of Buffalo from 2017 to 2021, and 3,472 crashes involving automobiles with pedestrians and bicyclists in Erie and Niagara counties over the similar span. 

The Niagara Street Cycle Monitor, a bike lane separated by a buffer from motorized website traffic, represented substantial development, GObike and Slow Roll leaders explained. That extend of Niagara, from Forest Avenue to Hampshire Street, is a neighborhood example of Full Streets, a nationwide plan by the U.S. Office of Transportation that “demands or encourages a harmless, snug, built-in transportation network for all buyers, regardless of age, potential, profits, ethnicity, or method of transportation.” The general purpose of the plan is to steer clear of automobile-centered design and style.

The Increased Buffalo-Niagara Regional Transportation Council is dedicated to advancing Entire Streets, reported Amy Weymouth, principal planner with the council. In an e mail, she highlighted Bicycle Buffalo Niagara, a regional bike master approach permitted by the transportation setting up council in 2020, that hinges on strategies to improve bicycle owner safety and lower crashes by way of additional two-way bike lanes on occupied streets, like the Niagara Avenue monitor.

“If we want to be a braggable bicycling metropolis, if we want to be a climate refuge town, we need to be on the entrance lines of bicycle infrastructure,” Gallivan mentioned. “It really is healthy for the metropolis on quite a few stages, still we lag.”

GObike has collected certain crash data in purchase to determine the major thoroughfares that most frequently see automobiles crashing into bicycles. That knowledge is partly the reason why Forest Avenue, among Niagara and Rees streets, considerably less than a mile from SUNY Buffalo Point out, has begun to acquire a makeover by means of GObike and the Metropolis of Buffalo Section of General public Works. Smith said north-south routes like Niagara and Elmwood have tended to get attention, whilst east-west avenues like Forest much better suit Buffalo’s width and better link the city by itself.

In addition to bike lanes, other adjustments advocated to discourage reckless driving include decrease speed limitations, pace bumps, checks for auto safety in regard to pedestrians and greater-intended streetscapes. GObike has counseled the operate of the East Side Bike Club and Jalonda Hill of Colored Women Bicycle Far too, in fighting for “mobility justice” in reduced-income neighborhoods. Their function, like GObike’s, extends further than bikes to a number of sorts of “energetic mobility.”

For the duration of the very last 10 months, GObike also has cited two pedestrian fatalities the firm believes could have been prevented with superior layout. West Side eighth-grader Martell Yanders was killed walking house from university in November at an intersection that did not have a painted crosswalk, while 27-yr-old Shauntia Dickinson was killed at Bailey and Broadway, which lacked a performing light-weight for pedestrians to cross.