BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — There's a new push to help people in cars and people on bikes share the road safely. GOBike Buffalo is back with another pilot program. This time the intersection of Linden and Parkside is at the focal point. They're hoping to address the wide drive lanes as well as the lack of ADA accessibility.
Jeff Kramer is a man on the move who told 7 News Reporter Sydni Eure he'd rather pedal than drive. Kramer has been biking through Buffalo for more than 50 years.
"I am used to biking all the time," Avid Cyclist James Kramer said. "I started way back before the Blizzard of '77."
But as much as he loves to cruise through North Buffalo, Kramer said he has seen some scary things.
"My one friend got run over," Kramer said. "He was stopped at Hertel and Military and somebody came around the corner and hit him and he has one foot on the curb of Hertel. That's how much that person cut the corner short."
Kramer shared this is just one example of how two worlds constantly and quite literally collide but never seem to work together.
"The problem is the drivers don't respect bicyclists and I can understand their reasoning," Kramer said. "I see many bicyclists not obeying the rules of the road and that's what aggravates the cars and the cars aggravate the bicyclists and it's a constant war. Everybody wants to be important and only wants to do what they want to do and not what other people want."
This is why Justin Booth, Executive Director of GOBike Buffalo said the community brought the Linden and Parkside intersection to their attention.
"Well this was actually a project that was brought to us," Booth said. "Erie County had been participating in the State Department of Health's Walking Action Institute. So it was the Erie County Department of Health, Erie County's Office for People with Disabilities as well as the Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council."
Booth said this location was chosen because its been notoriously identified as a dangerous intersection not only due to vehicle traffic but a large pedestrian flow as well.
"There's also a group home with people with disabilities who live across the street, it's in a neighborhood, and it has access to the Zoo and to the park," Booth said.
The project will address the existing lack of ADA accessibility and excessively wide drive lanes at the intersection of Parkside and Linden to provide safer continuous passage for pedestrians to the adjacent intersections of Depew Avenue and Crescent Avenue and the substandard sidewalks along Parkside Avenue as it passed underneath the Beltway-Subdivision railroad bridge.
"We know that by doing simple things like adding paint and bollards can make immediate improvements to the safety of those locations at a very inexpensive cost," Booth said.
He also shared this is a great way to gather community input. You can find out more about the pilot project and even take part in the survey by visiting the GOBike Buffalo Website here.
Booth said they've already had more than 400 survey responses all in favor of the safety changes.
We're told the full implementation will being on July 31st and will last for about two weeks.
"The message here is that this is temporary," Booth said. "This is to try it out."
