In only a few years, thousands of commuters headed to jobs and classes will arrive daily at a redesigned Metro Rail station serving as a hub for the new University at Buffalo medical school and a teeming Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

Thats the vision that officials from UB and the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority presented Thursday as they pledged cooperation toward integrating the current Allen/Medical Campus Metro Station into the new medical school complex.

This is a statement that we are committed to working together to come up with the best plan that meets the interests of transportation in Western New York and serves the interests of the medical school so we can make a determination of where we go, said Dennis R. Black, UBs vice president for university life and services.

The idea, the officials said, is to implement plans long on the drawing board to move the current medical school from the South Campus into a new building of at least seven stories over the Allen/Medical Campus Station.

The move aims to provide a viable transportation alternative that will mitigate the need to park even more cars on a burgeoning medical campus, while adding a touch of the urban vitality common to subway corridors in bigger cities like New York or Toronto.

The $350 million project is vital to moving workers, students, patients and visitors in and out of a neighborhood expected to become one of the citys major employment centers, UB officials said.

Its an urban setting, and it has to allow for patient and visitor access, Black said. If everybody who came there brought their own car, wed have to have a structure almost as tall as the HSBC building.

Thats not real, its not environmentally friendly, and it would be incredibly costly, he added. And we have alternatives.

Black and a contingent of UB officials, including Robert G. Shibley, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, presented their ideas to NFTA commissioners Thursday. They noted the Allen/Medical Campus Station will remain essentially unchanged below the surface and along the rail line when the project is completed in 2016.

But the surface portion will serve as the cornerstone of the new medical school building, leading to a glass atrium covering an extended Allen Street for pedestrian traffic into the rest of the medical campus. Black said planners also will study the potential for shops and restaurants as part of the atrium.

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Downtown medical school tied to subway