Buffalo drivers already know which intersections make the news. Harder to see from behind the wheel is which stretches of road, the corridors themselves, carry the worst odds before you ever reach a light or a stop sign. Regional crash data now maps those corridors by name, and the list runs from a state highway tunnel project in East Buffalo to two-lane county roads in rural Erie County.
Where the risk actually sits
In August 2025, the Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council (GBNRTC), the federally designated transportation planning body for Erie and Niagara counties, published the Roadway All-User Crash Elimination Plan, known locally as the RACE Plan.1 It's built from five years of state crash records, 2019 through 2023, and unlike most local coverage, it breaks the pattern down by road type, not just by intersection.
The pattern isn't what you'd guess. Urban interstates and freeways, the highways most people picture as dangerous, carried 27 percent of the region's vehicle miles traveled but only 12 percent of crashes and 10 percent of fatalities and serious injuries.1 Urban arterials, the wide multi-lane streets that carry local and through traffic at the same time, carried 39 percent of vehicle miles but 57 percent of crashes and 59 percent of fatalities and serious injuries.1 The interstate isn't the trap. The arterial in front of the plaza is.
Roadway departures, crashes where a vehicle leaves its lane or the road entirely, climbed from 104 in 2019 to a peak of 126 in 2021 before settling at 112 in 2023.1 Unsafe speed was a contributing factor in 35 percent of the region's fatal and serious-injury roadway departure crashes.1 GBNRTC's screening turned up 292 miles of road across both counties that meet the risk threshold for both roadway departures and speeding, urban arterials and rural arterials alike.1 Between 2019 and 2023 the region logged 341 traffic fatalities and 4,018 serious injury crashes, costing an estimated $5.4 billion and $3.5 billion respectively.1
Named corridors outside the city
Buffalo's own hotspot count is steep (57 City-owned segments and 72 intersections rated at the highest severity level in the plan's screening), but the RACE Plan's priority list reaches well past city limits.1 Working with a regional Safety Advisory Group, planners narrowed the crash-prone segments down to a short list for near-term safety studies. Several sit in rural and suburban stretches that rarely show up in Buffalo-focused coverage:
- Genesee Road (County Route 73/49) from Sisson Highway to Pratham Road, spanning the towns of Concord, North Collins, and Sardinia
- Boston State Road (CR 227) and Springville Boston Road (CR 228), from Boston Cross Road/Mill Street to Adams Street, towns of Boston and Concord
- Lockport Road from Military Road to Bear Ridge Road, towns of Niagara, Pendleton, and Wheatfield
- Niagara Street from 22nd Street to 30th Street, City of Niagara Falls
- 19th Street from La Salle Avenue to Ferry Avenue, City of Niagara Falls
- Main Street from Ontario Street to Pierce Avenue, City of Niagara Falls1
Erie County has separately identified 345 miles of county-owned roads with narrow lanes and minimal shoulder width specifically for roadway-departure reduction, to be widened in phases as funding allows.1
Kensington Expressway, NY-33
No corridor in the region has drawn more state money, or more controversy, than the Kensington Expressway, the sunken six-lane expressway carrying roughly 80,000 vehicles a day through East Buffalo.2 Governor Hochul has committed up to $1 billion to bury nearly a mile of it in a tunnel between East Ferry Street and Sidney Street, capped with restored parkland and street-level crossings where the original 1950s and 1960s construction cut the Humboldt Parkway neighborhood in two.2
The first phase is already under contract. In October 2024, the state awarded a $44.5 million contract to rebuild the Best Street Bridge over the expressway, adding two roundabouts and a 10-foot multiuse path, funded in part by a $55.59 million federal Reconnecting Communities grant awarded in February 2023.3 Separately, NYSDOT has a safety-enhancement project queued for Goodell Street, between the Kensington Expressway and NY-5 (Main Street), and a freeway incident-management program covering both the Kensington and I-290.1
Scajaquada Expressway, NY-198
The Scajaquada Expressway carries a different kind of history. On May 30, 2015, a car left the road through Delaware Park and struck a family walking near the water, killing three-year-old Maksym Sugorovskiy and seriously injuring his five-year-old sister.4 Drivers had routinely been clocked at 60 mph on that stretch. Governor Cuomo ordered the state to cut the limit to 30 mph within days and install park-appropriate guardrails and speed-messaging boards.4 In 2021, the City of Buffalo agreed to a $2.25 million settlement with the Sugorovskiy family; their attorneys had argued the city knew guardrails were needed there and hadn't installed them.5
Interstate 190 and the Niagara Falls interchange
I-190 is the region's other major freeway, running from the Niagara Frontier through Buffalo and over the Grand Island bridges toward Niagara Falls. Regionwide, freeways post the lowest crash rate per mile traveled of any road type, but NYSDOT still treats specific interchanges as priorities. The interchange where I-190 meets U.S. 62 (Niagara Falls Boulevard) is scheduled for a diverging-diamond redesign in the current five-year Transportation Improvement Program, a configuration built specifically to cut the crossing conflicts that cause the worst interstate crashes.1
What the fixes actually look like
The plan's countermeasures for roadway departures are specific enough to have their own engineering bulletin numbers. NYSDOT's Engineering Instruction 13-021 sets the standard for centerline audible roadway delineators, rumble strips built into the pavement's centerline, on roads posted at 45 mph or higher with no median. EI 16-014 covers a parallel treatment for shoulders on faster roads.1 Curve-specific packages add oversized warning signs, high-friction surface treatments, and flashing driver-feedback signs at horizontal curves with a documented crash history.1 For speed management on arterials, the toolbox runs from speed feedback signs up through physical street-width reductions: corner extensions, median islands, and speed tables.1
Nationally, NHTSA's preliminary count put 2024 traffic deaths at 39,345, the lowest since before the pandemic but still above 2019 levels.6 Erie and Niagara counties are trying to beat that trend on their own timeline: GBNRTC's policy committee has set a regional goal of eliminating traffic deaths and cutting serious injuries in half by 2050.1
If you're hurt on one of these roads
If you're in a crash on Genesee Road, the Kensington, the Scajaquada, or the I-190 interchange at Niagara Falls Boulevard, get medical attention first and make sure a police crash report gets filed at the scene. Several of these corridors already have documented histories, prior safety orders, or active construction contracts tied to them, records that can matter later for a claim. An attorney familiar with the corridor can help track that history down while you focus on recovery. You can find one through the legal directory.
This article is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council, "Roadway All-User Crash Elimination Plan: Erie-Niagara Comprehensive Roadway Safety Action Plan" (August 2025), https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56ccbbfd3c44d8670dbd1d84/t/68950cecf332201d64b73f19/1754598636389/GBNRTC+Final+RACE+Plan_08.04.2025.pdf
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Office of Governor Kathy Hochul, "Governor Hochul Announces Completion of Final Scoping Report for Kensington Expressway Project" (December 20, 2022), https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-completion-final-scoping-report-kensington-expressway-project-east
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Office of Governor Kathy Hochul, "Governor Hochul Announces Award of $44.5 Million Contract to Replace Best Street Bridge Over Kensington Expressway" (October 11, 2024), https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-award-445-million-contract-replace-best-street-bridge-over
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BTPM NPR (WBFO), "Following tragedy, Cuomo orders Scajaquada speed limit reduced to 30 mph" (May 31, 2015), https://www.btpm.org/local/2015-05-31/following-tragedy-cuomo-orders-scajaquada-speed-limit-reduced-to-30-mph
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WGRZ, "City of Buffalo nears $2.25M settlement with family of child killed in Route 198 accident," https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/local/city-of-buffalo-nears-225m-settlement-with-family-of-child-killed-in-route-198-accident/71-c7dde904-7aa3-4838-870f-a538b61fed10
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National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "NHTSA Estimates 39,345 Traffic Fatalities in 2024," https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-estimates-39345-traffic-fatalities-2024