By Simon Achterberg
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Eleven months after it opened as the first extension of Metro Rail since 1985, the DL&W station at the foot of Main Street is closed, and the reason says a lot about how hard it is to rebuild a downtown street while trains keep running down the middle of it.
Since Nov. 1, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority has been running Metro Rail on a single track in two places at once: underground between Humboldt-Hospital and Allen-Medical Campus stations, and above ground between Church and Canalside stations. Trains are scheduled every 20 minutes. Service ends at Canalside, and the NFTA says DL&W “will remain closed until Phase 1 of Cars on Main Street is completed mid-November.”
That first phase was supposed to be done by now. The NFTA’s Rail Renewal project page still says Phase 1 of the city’s Cars on Main Street work was expected to wrap up in the fall of 2026. Its October update is blunter: “Phase 1 of the project has been delayed but is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.” The page does not say why.
The last and largest stretch
The work is the final leg of the City of Buffalo’s Cars Sharing Main Street program, which has been bringing traffic back to the transit mall a few blocks at a time since cars returned between East Tupper and Mohawk streets in 2009. The last segment runs about six-tenths of a mile, from Mohawk to Exchange, through blocks closed to cars since 1985. WKBW put the price at nearly $60 million when construction started in April; completion is expected in the spring of 2028.
The scope is not a repaving. The NFTA says the job will leave new tracks, catenary and a concrete trackbed along the whole work area, and Buffalo Rising lists landscaping, street furniture, new sidewalks and pedestrian-scale lighting among the improvements, paid for with state transportation money.
Angela Keppel of Buffalo Place, the downtown management group, made the case for it when crews broke ground. “It’s rebuilding the entire Metro Rail tracks and building a better street for everyone, so there’ll be cars, there’ll be pedestrian amenities, beautiful plantings and it’s a better, accessible, safer street for everyone,” Keppel said, according to WKBW.
She pointed to the 2009 blocks as proof of concept. “It brings new life and vibrancy to the street, having access to Main Street we’ve seen has been so important to businesses,” Keppel said.
A station project that lost its contractor
The street rebuild is tangled up with a second, slower job in the same stretch of Main Street. The NFTA began rehabilitating Church Street station in July 2024, promising riders more comfort and better protection from the weather.
That $5 million project was expected to be finished by the end of 2025, Buffalo Business First reported in May, when the authority fired its contractor, Greenway USA. NFTA public affairs director Helen Tederous told WBEN she could not discuss the reason for the termination and said the authority was working with project stakeholders on a new timeline. A January 2026 NFTA committee agenda had already recorded the contractor as declared in default, with an insurer and an outside construction consultant brought in to help oversee the work.
The NFTA now says work on Church Station “has resumed” this fall and will continue “while weather allows.” It has not posted a new completion date, and it has not said publicly what the default has cost or who will pay to finish the job.
Riders and storefronts absorb the wait
For riders, the practical cost is a longer, less predictable trip. Trains are coming every 20 minutes on a line that connects downtown with the Medical Campus and UB’s South Campus. While DL&W is closed, the NFTA is pointing riders to Route 8-Main, which it is running fare-free between Allen Station and the Waterfront Village.
For businesses, the cost shows up at the front door. Angela Dabney opened LoudBrew Cafe at 304 Main St. a little more than six months before WKBW visited in October, and the construction landed right outside.
“There were points where we couldn’t even open the front door,” Dabney told WKBW. “With the construction, we had to make the back entrance our front.” She has turned the cafe into a family programming space and is planning live music to keep people coming.
Others are betting the payoff will be worth it. Rick Bassett, who owns the Salty Dog Barber Shop on Main Street, told WKBW in April that he expects two-hour parking and quick turnover to help retail. “It’s going to be amazing,” he said.
What comes next, and what is still unclear
The schedule ahead is long. The NFTA says Phase 2 of the street work, on the east, outbound side of Main, is set to start in spring 2027. Lafayette Station is due for its own rebuild starting that summer, and a pedestrian bridge linking DL&W to KeyBank Center is expected in 2027. Underground, crews began grouting cracks in the rail tunnel and installing new radio equipment between Humboldt-Hospital and Allen on Nov. 1.
Each of those projects can be defended on its own. Metro Rail opened in 1985, and the NFTA says decades of Western New York wind, sleet, rain and snow have taken a toll on it. But riders are now living with several construction jobs stacked in the same corridor at once, and the public record leaves basic questions open:
When, exactly, will DL&W reopen and double-track service return? What held up Phase 1? What is the new finish date and budget for Church Street station? And will the city and the NFTA sequence Phase 2 and the Lafayette work so riders are not losing a station and frequent service every construction season through 2028?
The Buffalo Chronicle is seeking answers from the City of Buffalo and the NFTA and will update this story with their answers.
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