Orchard Park, N.Y. (WBEN) - As expected, parking and traffic flow for Buffalo Bills games were both a little different this season given that a new stadium is currently in the process of being erected across the street from where the current Highmark stadium resides.
More lot owners report that their lots filled up quickly this year, and while that is good for local business, it also meant those who are used to parking in certain spaces had to scramble to find new places to park.
"Overall, I think parking went pretty well this year," said Eric 'The Hammer' Matwijow, owner of Hammer's Lot on Abbott Road. "The beginning of the year was a little tough with the new traffic patterns, and people used to parking in certain lots like the mud lot, which the Bills bought out. So they had to generally look around and find some new parking spots and tailgate with their favorite group of those fans."
You also had to factor in the snow.
"With the snow, that did impact generally maybe 10 to 20% of parking in the community, some people didn't even plow," notes Matwijow.
Mark Ebeling, owner of Danny's South, notes the biggest problem in his opinion. "People are in the street, they have nowhere to walk. They're walking down the middle of the streets and traffic and it's terrible. But I don't think you're going to lose a lot of parking, because the Bills, they still have their parking across the street. They have plenty of it. It's just I think the snow hurt them in the last few games. It really did."
And perhaps the biggest problem for most stadium-goers was the traffic to and from the games.
"Traffic was backing up a lot earlier than in past years," notes Jim Costello, Regional Manager of Bert's Bikes including the one in Orchard Park, where people can park for the games. "We found our lots were definitely busier this year. And I think going forward, you know, that is going to continue, I would assume that our parking would increase again, next year, even when there's less spots available."
"The traffic, especially at night games was horrendous," Matwijow added. "Especially the Cowboys game. Five minutes before halftime, people were still looking for parking spots. It was just a different flow, but especially the night games just adds more confusion, obviously in dark. And leaving the game adds at least another hour to the time when people leave to go home."
Stadium construction is going to augment greatly in the coming months, with heavy construction certainly sharing time with the Bills' next season. Orchard Park neighbors in the beginning of January got some correspondence from the stadium construction coordinators of some new equipment coming into the construction zone, several cranes which will be used to build the "supersteel structure" of the stadium.
Ebeling has an idea for better traffic flow for next season.
"I feel that if they ran two lanes out Abbott Road and let the other 20A (Big Tree Road) open up, this would empty out a lot quicker. We've never had the backups on waiting for people to go to my parking lot as we had this year. It's terrible."
