Why One Parkway Now?
Complete Highway Removal for Full Parkway Restoration
With a billion dollars in hand, Buffalo can go from worst to first in the national highway removal movement. Whereas highway removal is almost always considered to be synonymous with highway-removal-to-a-boulevard, ROCC has already rejected the boulevard option to avoid 65,000 cars a day driving right in front of residents’ houses. Moreover, Buffalo has the first ever City-wide Park and Parkway System in the history of the United States, and in order to restore it, we need Complete Highway Removal of both the 198 and 33.
Unfortunately, NYSDOT’s Final Design Report / Environmental Assessment (FDR/EA), only provides one take-it-or-leave-it “Build Alternative” – a Tunnel that would require 20 feet of additional blasting and digging at the northern end, covered by a replica parkway that stops 2,000-feet short of connecting Martin Luther King Park (MLK Park) to Delaware Park with a Parkway.
NYSDOT’s design has two disastrous consequences: 1) The Tunnel would cement-in-place that these two Parks will never be connected with a Parkway because any future Tunnel extension to the north would run into the buried Scajaquada Creek; and, 2) Concentrated exhaust plumes will be blown out the Tunnel portal ends toward dozens of schools, youth facilities, parks, museums and churches.
As a result of NYSDOT’s plan, both of ROCC’s initial goals of restoring Humboldt Parkway and improving the health of local residents would be made worse by the $1.5 billion investment.
We stand behind and support all local stakeholder groups including the ROCC to fight for ROCC’s original goals of ending exhaust-related diseases in highway-adjacent neighborhoods and fully restoring the beautiful Humboldt Parkway so it once again connects Delaware and MLK Parks. This long-overdue Parkway connection should be made now with the currently allocated funding.
