This Traffic Light on Abbott Road Needs to Go

Traffic lights are a necessity in many instances. For extremely busy intersections, you have to have them in order to keep traffic flowing. I know, “flowing,” but they actually do instead of just waiting there forever as traffic goes both directions.

Roundabouts are great but the cost of turning dozens of street lights into roundabouts isn’t realistic.

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We don’t really have to put up with much traffic in Buffalo. Sure, we have rush hour traffic just like anywhere else but I’ve been to bigger cities (Nashville in April), and those places have real traffic.

Still, there are frustrating roads and street lights in Western New York. One of them is located on the border of South Buffalo and Lackawanna on Abbott Road.

Abbott Road gets fairly congested once you get past the Ridge Road intersection. There are multiple school speed zones and then Mercy Hospital by Cazenovia Park.

There’s one street light that is by far the most frustrating of them, however.

The traffic light is located between Ridge and Dorrance, allowing traffic to come out of Abbott Road Plaza.

The thing is, there’s hardly any traffic coming out of that plaza — even in the middle of the day, let alone after 6-7 pm. The light is on a timer, as with most City of Buffalo lights. It also seems to turn red more frequently than the other lights on Abbott.

This light should absolutely be blinking yellow after 7 pm, at the very least. The plaza also has an exit out of the McDonald’s driveway, as well as an exit on Dorrance, which is a far busier intersection.

There’s almost no need for that street light.