We're Going In: The Metro Rail

Where brakes screech, fluorescent lights flicker, and 'Greensleeves' haunts the halls

The Delavan College Station, a journey to the earth’s core. File photo by the Author.

A thunder deep in the ground.

A string of Brutalist stations on gritty Main Street corners.

The jingle of trolley bells downtown, as trains trundle past.

This is Buffalo’s Metro Rail. It’s a mystery to many, and no wonder. Buffalonians do not like to pay for rides. Taxis never quite worked out here. If we don’t drive ourselves, we bristle at getting an Uber.

And let’s face facts, our public transport system could use a lot of improvement. It serves the few, not the many.

However before we play the blame game, let’s be honest: If you live “out where the buses don’t run,” beyond the reach of Metro Bus or Metro Rail, chances are … you want it that way.

And if you ever find yourself stepping into a Metro Rail station, it can be unnerving.

No staff in sight. Just squat machines built into the wall, waiting for your coins and bills. And in the really deep stations — hello, Delavan! — you glimpse vast escalators, in institutional blue tubes, plunging downward for miles like something out of the USSR.

Even for a seasoned rider like me, Metro Rail never quite becomes routine. It is always a little wild. A little weird. Always something of an adventure.

We’re going in.

Two Bucks to the Center of the Earth

The Metro Rail fare is $2. It has been $2 for a while. A round trip ticket is $4. An all-day pass is $5.

You feed your dollar bills and change into machines at the station. It whirs, it blinks, it spits out a paper ticket, pictured here.

The process hasn’t changed much over the years. Neither has the price. How many things can you say that about?

One thing that has changed: turnstiles. The trains used to run on the honor system, with occasional inspectors boarding the trains, demanding to see tickets. Turnstiles appeared in the last year. I had trouble at first — indifferent sensors, doors that wouldn’t budge. Sometimes a guard would help. Sometimes a kind stranger. These days I can usually make it work... after a few tries.

My station has a water fountain, but it doesn’t work. So let’s just pass it by, and descend.

It’s bad news if, on the way down, you pass people on the way up. That means you just missed a train.

But down you go — on escalators, if the escalators are working, or down concrete staircases.

You reach the platform: concrete, fluorescent, and utterly joyless. Soviet to the bone. There’s usually a bit of a wait. In truth, there’s always a bit of a wait.

The sound system is a trip in itself. Sometimes it plays classical music — never the usual suspects, either. Once, not long ago, the subterranean soundtrack featured a haunting Mozart piano sonata I love that you never hear.

Often, the system leans toward what you might call film noir music — moody strings, lonesome horns, the kind of soundtrack that makes you glance over your shoulder. Just last week, I stood there, alone, at the Amherst Street station, while the loudspeakers played “Greensleeves.”

A medieval lullaby, echoing through a concrete underground bunker! Yes, I shot video.

I’ve ridden the subways in New York, Paris, and London. You’ve got to love Buffalo for making no serious effort to soften the experience here. No buskers. The few ads you see are mostly public service announcements telling you to get tested or not vape.

And yet ….

With imagination, the train can claim a place in your heart.

The smell of the tunnels, the screech of the brakes

There is the simple fun of being able to say: “I’m taking the train.” You feel cosmopolitan.

Do the Park and Ride, and you can skip the downtown parking headache. Bring your bike — not every bus is equipped for that, but with the train, you take the elevator at the station and just wheel that bike on.

If you’re lucky, you get your magic moments.

Like when the train rolls in. Even now, I get that childhood thrill — the smell of the tunnels, the screech of the brakes, the big rush of wind that blows back your hair. It still makes me smile. Always.

And then, the big moment — when the train breaks the surface downtown, like a submarine rising into the Theater District.

Out of darkness, into light!

My dad loved that part. He was excited the first time he rode the Metro Rail, back in the 1980s. It reminded him of the old streetcars of his Great Depression boyhood — the rails, the bells — and felt like something coming back.

Now I have my own memories. When the Metro Rail first opened, I was working at Citibank, downtown in the Brisbane Building. My co-workers and I breathlessly shared our experiences.

“It really goes fast,” said our supervisor, Chris Barone. But she added: “However, you lose all that time when you get downtown and it’s above ground. Then it creeps.”

True now too.

Most Fridays, I take it to Johnny D’s at the Hyatt. There’s a happy hour, a grand piano, and my husband Howard entertaining, playing songs from the Great American Songbook. Could he play “The Trolley Song?” I’ll have to ask.

Because I’m grateful to the Metro Rail on these nights. It drops me off right at the hotel’s doorstep.

It’s not paradise. It’s always being worked on. You deal with single-tracking — two trains sharing one track, which translates to delays and confusion. And occasionally, loud people turn your commute into purgatory. I keep meaning to bring headphones for emergencies. Last week, one guy had a radio blasting — so annoying. Another was talking to himself… and arguing back.

But hey — you get that in the Central Library too. So I think positive.

The trains’ color schemes may change. A station might get a little cosmetic love (don’t worry, it’ll still look like East Berlin). But the rest? Frozen in time.

Sometimes you overhear conversations between strangers sitting far apart on the train. Sometimes, that stranger is you.

So sure — it’s flawed, it’s weird, it’s the city’s underbelly.

But time warp back to the USSR without having to live there, and a chance to hear “Greensleeves” piped through subterranean caverns? And a ride to somewhere you have to be? All for two bucks?

A bargain!

Mary Kunz Goldman is known in Buffalo for her long career with The Buffalo News, writing about classical music and authoring the long-running Buzz column as well as a popular series titled “100 Things Every Western New Yorker Should Do At Least Once.” She is the author of “Pennario,” a memoir about her friendship with the great concert pianist Leonard Pennario — and also “Sketches of Buffalo,” a book of drawings of her hometown, available at the Totally Buffalo Store.

Also By the Author

Mary’s weekly feature “We’re Going In” celebrates curious adventures around town. Our previous “We’re Going In” column featured the Great Baehre Swamp. Before that, the series explored Mount Calvary Cemetery; also, a Goodwill madhouse known as “the bins”; a memorable Met opera simulcast; and a journey through the Junior League’s 2025 Decorators Show House.

Thanks to all who subscribe — paid, and free! To get a look at Mary’s complete online publication, click on MaryKunzGoldman.Substack.com.