At the 2021 CRT Annual Meeting, Hal Morse, Executive Director of the Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council presented exploration of expectations after the recent elections.
This is the 2020 Annual Report for Citizens for Regional Transit (draft version).
Citizens for Regional Transit submitted a letter to the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation (ECHDC) on the subject of the Buffalo Outer Harbor Civic and Land Use Improvement Project: General Project Plan. November 9, 2020. Our letter is attached here.
This is a presentation given by CRT President Doug Funke to the Torch Club on December 15, 2020.
This is the October 2020 CRT Newsletter.
This is the July/August 2020 Citizens for Regional Transit newsletter.
CRT Board Member Elizabeth Giles published an Another Voice article in the Buffalo News about the importance of extending Buffalo’s light rail to the East Side and airport.
https://buffalonews.com/opinion/another-voice-fulfill-coles-vision-with…
CRT President Doug Funke submitted an Another Voice essay to the Buffalo News, about the need of increases in rail transport to mitigate the effects of global climate change.
https://buffalonews.com/2020/04/29/increased-rail-transport-needed-to-m…
This is the April 2020 Citizens for Regional Transit newsletter.
We are in uncharted waters with regard to COVID-19 virus; we don’t know how bad it will get or how wide and long its devastation will reach. We hope it will be put under control soon and pray that your friends and families are spared the worst from this illness.
Our transit systems, nation-wide, are also in uncharted waters. With the statewide orders for non-essential workers to stay at or work from home, the closing of schools and businesses, and the need for maintaining maximum social distance, transit systems are being hurt badly. Ridership is down between 40% and 90% in transit systems across the US (e.g., NYC ridership is down 67%, Bay area transit down 87%, Seattle down 45%).
The NFTA is experiencing similar ridership decreases. These losses are made worse when other taxes that support transit (e.g., the Erie County sales and mortgage recording taxes) also take a financial hit due to the virus. The $2.2T Federal CARES act just passed and signed into law by President Trump includes $25B for transit systems. This will help.
We are very pleased with the actions taken by the NFTA including: