Fans face difficult drive to stadium for Bills preseason game
Road construction will squeeze traffic at two locations
Navigating through game-day traffic near Ralph Wilson Stadium may take a bit longer this year — starting with Thursday’s sold-out preseason game — as state road work causes two bottlenecks on Southwestern Boulevard.
The state will continue to squeeze traffic down to one lane in each direction on Southwestern where it crosses Route 219, about a mile east of the football stadium. The bridge reconstruction work is expected to continue through Sept. 22.
One-lane traffic in each direction also will be in force on Southwestern about 1z miles west of The Ralph, on a bridge that crosses the Buffalo Southern Railroad. That project will continue through most of December.
“We’re trying to do everything we can to facilitate the movement of traffic through the area of the stadium,” said Susan Surdej, spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation.
Electronic signs describing alternative routes — such as California Road and Route 219 — will be in place on game days to shunt traffic away from work areas, she said.
In addition, work on Southwestern Boulevard and Abbott Road in the immediate area of the stadium has been wrapped up in time for Thursday’s Kids Day game, Surdej said, easing access to stadium parking lots.
The remaining road work wouldn’t make game-day tie-ups worse than they already are, officials predicted.
“What we are being told is that it will not impact the traffic,” Bills spokesman Scott Berchtold said.
Post-game traffic usually clears in about an hour and a half, Erie County Sheriff’s Patrol Chief Dennis Rankin said. After a sold-out game, some 74,000 fans stream out of parking lots and onto Orchard Park roads.
“I believe it will be about the same,” Rankin said. “It will not be a big problem for us.”
Work crews will shift equipment on game days to reduce the length of the bridge bottlenecks to a minimum, he said.
Most football traffic runs north-south, Rankin said, using Abbott Road and Route 219. Although Southwestern Boulevard passes just north of the stadium, it lacks on-ramps to major north-south routes, he said.
The road work is part of a $21.4 million project on Route 20 that is scheduled to continue until December 2009, affecting next football season as well, Surdej said. The work involves reconstruction of the roadway and bridges, a more extensive repair than simply replacing road surfaces, she said.
