AMHERST (WBEN) - The NFTA held another public meeting at Sweet Home Middle School on Tuesday evening, as the organization continues to investigate the reality of an expanded Metro Rail line that would connect the UB South Campus to UB North.
"We're in the environmental process; we're doing an environmental impact statement, so before we finish the drafted environmental impact statement, we're having an open house here tonight to gather feedback," said Tom George, director of public transit for the NFTA. "We continue to develop the design of the project, address issues that come up as we go and come up with mitigating actions for those, whether they're traffic, alignment or noise. As we do that, we're bringing it back to the public to get their feedback on it."
"I have a lot of concerns; the most important one is that we have a neighborhood that's been here for a long time - we even still have some of our original owners," began Steve. "We've been out here because this is our suburban area; this is the community where we decided that this is the place that we wanted to live, and one of the reasons why is because it is the suburbs - this is an entity that is not the urban environment - and here they have the Lite Rail transit that they feel they need to extend out here for whatever reason...we are out here because we don't have a purpose for it."
"We're excited about it - I mean this has been incoming for many, many years, and it's finally starting to happen," said Funke, who believes this project should simply be the beginning of a much larger network of Lite Rail expansion. "...by and large, it's seen as a positive step forward, I think. I know that the NFTA did a survey, and there was a majority of Amherst residents who support this, and of course the university supports it, and they're a big player in this too."
"If federal funding were to occur in a two-year period, we then bring design," said George. "You're still looking at 10 years before we're actually riding a train through this area, so it's a 10-year process that we're in."