Restoring an Olmsted Park in the Heart of Buffalo
4 March 2010 - 10:00am
Civic advocates in Buffalo, bolstered by upcoming NYSDOT study and a Mayor intent on change, consider ways to remove a blighted highway that cuts through the heart of the city and an Olmsted-designed park.
Geoff Kelly writes, "The loss of Humboldt Parkway in favor of an entrenched highway cutting the city in two ranks high on the list of most regretted and frequently bemoaned Buffalo planning mistakes, right alongside the failure to locate UB’s new campus downtown.
It is also the first of these midcentury blunders that the region has a real shot at reversing. The New York State Department of Transportation, armed with $2 million in federal funds, is currently shopping for a consultant to evaluate possible ways to restore Humboldt Parkway."
Full Story:
Bury This Big Mistake
Source:
Artvoice (Buffalo), March 3, 2010
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Every dollar spent on new and wider highways is a dollar taken from taxpayers, and every inch of right-of-way that Big Brother takes is an inch taken from landowners.
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But Why Isn't Buffalo's Mayor Working On It?
From the article:
there’s the fifth option introduced by Mayor Brown last summer: Fill in the expressway and replace it with an at-grade, tree-lined urban boulevard comprising eight lanes.
NYSDOT’s response to Brown’s letter was tepid:
“To add that alternative would change the classification of the study under NEPA,” Mozrall explains, referring to the National Environmental Protection Act, “from an environmental assessment to a full-blown environmental impact statement, because that would have a drastic effect on the through traffic that’s running on the expressway right now.”
An EIS can take substantially longer than an environmental assessment, which Mozrall says will probably take two to three years as it is. Still, he added, if the citizens advisory group, the mayor, the Common Council, or any of the other politicians driving this project told NYSDOT to get serious about that fifth option, then NYSDOT would do it.
But the mayor’s office has not communicated with NYSDOT since sending that letter last summer, and the mayor’s office did not respond to numerous requests from this newspaper for comment on the issue.
Charles Siegel
This is inspiring
These sorts of stories are inspiring. Regardless of how permanent some bad decisions may seem (in this case, a highway through town), stories like these demonstrate that many are indeed reversible.