Buffalo NFTA board selling off its railroad right of ways to there cronies

[Anonymous]

To the Board of
Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority ·
181 Ellicott Street · Buffalo, New York 1420

Dear Luiz F Kahl ,

It has come to my attention that NFTA is selling off railroad corrodrs that formerly belonged to Conrail.
The reason for aquiring these right of ways were for the future expansion of the NFTA light rail system.
These right of ways were aquired under the rail-banking act and provisions under the
Interstate Commerice Commision (Now The Surface Transportation Board) which gave
local goverments first “dibs” or right of aquistion.

The Intent was to preserve the right of ways for future railroad or trail use.
Use of the right of ways for Bus Rapid Transit is also allowed.
However the selling off of the right of way precludes the this act and side steps the legal
mandate of planning transportation needs for the future of Buffalo.

The Private development of houses and retail on top of the right of ways instead of building a rail line and developing around it is damaging to the enviroment and is violation of the trust that the people of Buffalo put in NFTA to procure these right of ways for the enevitble growth that this city will see once links to the Toronto-Niagara Falls-Golden Triangle is establised. The Golden Trianlge was built in part becase of GO trains going thru that corridor. Preserving these right of ways will ensure that there will be rail service when feasible on these right of ways. Aquiring new right of ways and using eminate domain could cost hundreds of million of dollars.

The Selling of NFTA real estate is suspect because there has been little public invovement in how this will impact them. It also seems to the transit riding public that NFTA is more instrested in the Airport and Real Estate Development then its core mission of providing low cost transportation to thousands of working people every day. By building rail for these people and ignoring the not in my back yard suberbanites who have race prejudiaces issues is the only way that this city can really thrive.

I hereby ask that this Board cease and desist from selling any real estate that they own on former railroad right of ways and void any sales pending now. Investigation is currently underway by the State Department of Transportion on these matters as well as conflicts of intrest from these sales. A letter is also pending to the Attorney General of the State of New York and the Surface Transportation Board on this issue.



X
Raymond Tylicki
Transittrain Consulting
“Southern Tier Commuter Rail Campaign”
739 E Second Street Suite 5.
Jamestown NY 14701

CC: Joe Buffamonte NYDOT
CC: Justin Booth Buffalo Healthy Partnership

[Junctionfan]

Right now Erie County Legislature is having some big time budget problems. The whole lot of the legislaturers and a guy name Joel Giambra don't really know what the heck they are doing thus the State had to send in someone to audit them and make recommendations including a control board.

This sounds like something they may have done directly or indirectly.