Buffalo drivers hear the same road names over and over: Bailey Avenue, Genesee Street, William Street, Walden Avenue. That's not folklore. The region's own transportation planners spent nearly two years mapping exactly where crashes cluster across Erie and Niagara counties, and the data keeps pointing back to a handful of corridors inside the City of Buffalo.
In August 2025, the Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council (GBNRTC), the federally designated metropolitan planning organization for the two-county region, published the Roadway All-User Crash Elimination Plan, known locally as the RACE Plan, built from five years of state crash records.1 It's the most detailed public accounting of where people are dying and getting seriously hurt on Buffalo-area roads, and it names the intersections.
The regional numbers
Between 2019 and 2023, Erie and Niagara counties recorded 341 traffic fatalities and just over 4,000 serious injury crashes, an average of 68 deaths a year, or at least one fatal crash somewhere in the region every week.1 GBNRTC estimates the combined economic cost of those fatal crashes at roughly $5.4 billion over the five years, with serious injury crashes adding another $3.5 billion.1
The long-term trend had been improving. Traffic deaths fell 67 percent between 1979 and 2019, from 178 to 58 a year.1 Then, like much of the country, the region saw fatalities and serious injuries tick back up from 2021 through 2023, even as vehicle miles traveled stayed flat.1 Nationally, NHTSA's preliminary count puts 2024 traffic deaths at 39,345, the lowest fatality rate since 2019 but still above pre-2020 levels.2
Crashes at intersections got worse locally during that stretch. Fatal and serious injury crashes classified as intersection-related in the two counties rose from 269 in 2019 to 412 in 2023.1 Urban arterial roads, the wide, signal-controlled streets that carry most through-traffic in Buffalo neighborhoods, account for 57 percent of all crashes region-wide but 59 percent of fatalities and serious injuries.1 By ownership, NYSDOT-maintained roads carry 39 percent of crashes and 42 percent of fatalities and serious injuries, while local city, town, and village roads carry 46 percent of crashes and 41 percent of the worst outcomes.1
The Bailey Avenue cluster
When GBNRTC's consultants ran a formal hotspot screen, comparing each intersection's crash history against what's statistically expected for a road carrying that traffic volume, the City of Buffalo came out with more high-severity locations than any other jurisdiction in the region: 129 segments and intersections with at least two fatal or serious injury crashes over five years, out of 233 identified across both counties.1 Buffalo also holds 15 of the 19 worst hotspots regionally for pedestrians, cyclists, and other vulnerable road users.1
From that screening, GBNRTC and its member agencies narrowed the list to 13 priority corridors and intersections for near-term safety study.1 The single most complex site in the city is the junction of Bailey Avenue with East Delavan Avenue, Genesee Street, Walden Avenue, Broadway, William Street, Clinton Street, and Seneca Street, a cluster of legs and cross streets jointly owned by the City of Buffalo and the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority.1 That kind of geometry, multiple streets converging at odd angles, is exactly the risk factor the plan flags for severe intersection crashes.1
Four more Buffalo street segments made the same priority list:
- Grant Street from Forest Avenue to Hampshire Street
- Genesee Street from Mosselle Street to East End Avenue
- Sycamore Street from Jefferson Avenue to Lathrop Street
- East Ferry Street from Jefferson Avenue to Bailey Avenue1
Erie County's suburban watch list
Separately, Erie County has identified 19 signalized intersections, mostly on county roads outside the city, that meet the same crash-risk thresholds and are queued for signal and geometric upgrades as funding allows.1 They include Lake Avenue at McKinley Parkway, Kenmore Avenue at Colvin Avenue, William Street at Bowen Road, George Urban Boulevard at Dick Road, and Wehrle Drive at both Harris Hill Road and South Youngs Road.1
Some fixes are already funded. The region's 2026-2030 Transportation Improvement Program took effect in October 2025 and layers 20 additional safety and intersection projects onto the priority network.3 They include intersection improvements at NY 31 and Carmen/Griswold and NY 31 and Royalton Center, both planned for 2028, and at U.S. 62 and Packard Road, planned for 2029, plus a Bailey Avenue reconstruction from Kensington Avenue to Delavan Street with a 2026 target and a Bailey Avenue Bus Rapid Transit line sponsored by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority.13
Pedestrians and cyclists carry the worst of it
Across Erie and Niagara counties, 24 percent of crashes involving a pedestrian end in a fatality or serious injury, compared with 15 percent for crashes involving a bicyclist and just 4 percent of crashes overall.1 Pedestrian deaths and serious injuries made up 9.3 percent of all such crashes region-wide from 2019 to 2023, and bicyclist casualties added another 3.7 percent, with both trending upward over the period.1 GBNRTC's analysis found that 72 percent of fatal and serious bicyclist and pedestrian crashes in the region happen at intersections rather than midblock, which is why crosswalk visibility, signal timing, and turning-vehicle conflicts dominate the plan's countermeasure list.1 Statewide, New York's Pedestrian Safety Action Plan put $110 million into more than 4,000 intersection and roadway upgrades between 2016 and 2021, the policy groundwork GBNRTC is now building on locally.4
What's changing, and what hasn't yet
GBNRTC's policy committee adopted a regional goal in 2022 to eliminate traffic deaths and cut serious injuries 50 percent by 2050.1 But as of the plan's publication, the region still lacked a formal Vision Zero policy, and the RACE Plan's own recommendations call on GBNRTC to adopt one and to start encouraging individual counties and municipalities, including the City of Buffalo, to pass their own supporting resolutions.1 Recommended engineering fixes for the priority corridors, drawn from the Federal Highway Administration's Safe System Roadway Design Hierarchy, range from signal retiming and reflective backplates up to roundabout conversions at the worst stop-controlled crossings.15 New York's separate statewide plans on vulnerable road users and roadway departures, both cited throughout the RACE Plan, point to the same two levers: speed and intersection conflict.67
If you're hurt at one of these intersections
If you're in a crash at Bailey and Genesee, on Grant Street, or anywhere else on this list, get medical care first and make sure a police crash report gets filed. These locations already have documented crash histories that can matter for a claim, from prior signal complaints to past crash data at the same site. An attorney familiar with Erie County intersections can help track down that crash report, any signal-timing or maintenance records, and the other paperwork 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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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
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Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council, Transportation Improvement Program (FFY 2026-2030), https://www.gbnrtc.org/tip
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New York State, Pedestrian Safety Action Plan, https://www.ny.gov/pedsafety/pedestrian-safety-action-plan
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Federal Highway Administration, Safe System Roadway Design Hierarchy, https://highways.dot.gov/sites/fhwa.dot.gov/files/2024-01/Safe_System_Roadway_Design_Hierarchy.pdf
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New York State Department of Transportation, Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment (2023 Strategic Highway Safety Plan, Appendix 2), https://www.dot.ny.gov/divisions/operating/osss/highway-repository/SHSP2023_Appendix_2_VRUSA.pdf
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New York State Department of Transportation, Roadway Departure Safety Action Plan (2024), https://www.dot.ny.gov/divisions/operating/osss/highway-repository/RwDSAP.pdf