February 18, 2016 by Mike Hudson

Train station, train station who’s responsible for the train station?

In spite of the fact that the ribbon cutting of the Dyster administration train station is but a few months away the transportation facility is still, incredibly, without an operation and maintenance budget. Due to that fact some diehard Dyster administration cheerleaders have taken to promoting a cover story to inoculate the mayor against blame. That cover story goes like this: The train station looks like a $44 million mistake, but you can’t pin all the blame on Mayor Dyster.

Some take issue with those who claim that the train station is Mayor Dyster’s project. A recent editorial in another newspaper tied the project to the tails of previous mayors along with Paul Dyster. The argument appears to be an attempt to slide the rail facility ever so gently off the mayor’s planning table. That, however, is not so easily done because the facts are inconveniently contrary.

While the train station was a pie in the sky project for many years it remained just that, pie in the sky. It was Mayor Dyster who teamed up with city planner Tom DeSantis to move quickly in getting the train station onto its feet. They transferred federal funds from Buffalo Avenue road building to the train station construction account. Casino revenue was then set aside to support the $44,000,000 project price tag.

Make no mistake, this train station, for good or ill, properly belongs at the mayor’s doorstep. No amount of tampering with the facts of the timeline will succeed in putting daylight between the mayor and his costly pet project. When you add in the fact that the mayor and his planner have failed to provide a train station operation and maintenance budget it’s easy to see there’s serious problems facing the Niagara Falls International Railway and Intermodal Transportation Center.

The Underground Railroad Interpretive Center – a key element of the train station project – was to have opened its doors five years ago but remains locked as tight as the mayor’s desk when he’s hiding a proposed budget. The building is mired in an inexplicable six year lawsuit (at what cost to the taxpayer no one knows) and the Underground Railroad Commission no longer meets. The organization quite possibly no longer exists. No matter since that commission has been given $2.45 million in casino cash and how those funds have been used is anyone’s guess.

We won’t even mention the “re bid” of the train station that cost the taxpayers $350,000 in casino revenue two years ago. $350,000 for the project planners to prepare the rebid paperwork.

It’s not the Dyster administration train station?

The record proves quite the opposite.

Paul Dyster has brought the taxpayer funded train station to Niagara Falls. From the history of Niagara Falls to this year, residents/taxpayers did not have to pay for a train station. Now they will pay an undetermined amount to fund an unneeded and over sized station for an antiquated, outmoded form of travel.