This is very heartening news! An 8 mile segment of the Erie Canal Trailway is on it's way to being completed. This is a Good Thing (TM) for Buffalo, and WNY as a whole for several reasons.
For starters, the Erie Canal Trailway Tour is a major annual event, drawing at least 500 people for the official event (Registered riders), and many, many more in support crews for the riders. Then, add into this general tourism, the trailway contributes about $380 million into the Upstate NY economy annually.
Then, adding jobs to the economy is a big hit as well. Each mile of roadway creates 1 job in the state (On average). Each mile of bicycles infrastructure adds 2.
I for one am glad they're completing this. Now, if only they could figure out how to get funding for the infrastructure inside of the city, and surrounding areas, I'd be ecstatic!
Will this be the prompting for us to build out more infrastructure for mutli-modal transport in the city? They've already made leaps and bounds to the local bicycle trails, now we just need to work on that Niagara St. restriping project.
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