Sunday July 19th 2026 - Peace Bridge and city streets - Buffalo NY and Fort Erie Ontario - 3.4 miles, not much elevation gain

Part 2 of our adventure (see previous post about Buffalo Harbor walk) was attempting to follow a guide I found on Buffalorising.com that described how to, as a pedestrian, cross the Peace Bridge into Canada.  You might think that crossing a bridge on foot would be a very obvious activity that you don't need a guide for but the Peace bridge is a major international crossing.  It has long complex ramps that funnel auto traffic then spread them out to a dozen border control booths on both the US and Canadian sides of the bridge.  Freight traffic has its own even longer more complex set of ramps that pulls them away from the car traffic.  For our purposes, the hardest part was finding a place to park near the nearly invisible pedestrian entry to the bridge complex.  Once we found parking (near the corner of Busti Ave and Rhode Island Street) we headed across Busti and walked along a series of tight fenced areas that take you through a turnstile into the controlled crossing area.  The bridge's pedestrian walkway is generously sized and didn't feel like an afterthought.  The speed of traffic on the bridge is pretty modest which helps make walking along the pedestrian path pleasant.  The views from the bridge are great and it attains a pretty great height on the Buffalo side as it crosses over I-190 and probably the designated shipping channel.

 

 

On the Canadian side we came down the bridge slope and then walked under the bridge to get to the administrative building for the Canadian Border Services.  As a pedestrian you are told (via signage) to use the first 'available' vehicle lane to be processed.  That was a strange experience since there was a substantial line of cars at all of the lanes but we just stood to the side of the closest 'normal' entry lane and the agent waved us over as soon as he finished with the car that was there when we walked up.  It felt a little bit like using a drive-up ATM as a pedestrian.  Awkward.  The border guy was very friendly and nice to talk to and we were soon crossing back over the Nexus lanes to get back to the pedestrian path.  Really interesting is that the pedestrian path takes you to the side of the admin building and you cross into a quiet residential area through a pedestrian only opening in a fence.  It's a VERY different path than the cars take.  Cars have no choice but to merge onto the limited access QEW highway.  From there we walked a handful of blocks through sleepy Fort Erie and ate at the same Chinese restaurant that the Buffalo Rising article author went to.  There are several other places to eat on that same street and we DO plan to do this again.

 

 

Lunch was VERY good.  After that we headed back to the bridge on a slightly different route and started the long sloping walk up the bridge back to Buffalo.  Border processing on the US side is different.  You ring a bell and, eventually, somebody buzzes you into a small processing area inside the CBP building next to the bridge.  After processing you are released to exit through a gate that they buzz you through.  The US agent was friendly and nice also and in both cases we spent very little time dealing with the border crossing procedures.  This was a really fun activity and almost NOBODY walks or bikes across this bridge.  We saw a total of 3 other people, all on bikes.