Bronx Freeway Fight Takes National Stage

13 July 2010 - 12:00pm

The local environmental justice movement to remove a short, recently renovated Bronx expressway has taken on national prominence. On July 13, NY DOT is expected to release three options that may decide its future, including one to remove it.

Politically it might be seen as truckers who depend on it vs. the "Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance, a coalition of Bronx and citywide environmental, housing and transportation groups" who see it as an "eyesore for Hunts Point residents". Nationally it "has become a battleground in a fight to take urban spaces back from the automobile."

Advocates state " it would ease traffic, improve neighborhood life and right a decades-old wrong committed by the master planner Robert Moses of building an unnecessary highway".

"John Norquist, president and chief executive of the Congress for a New Urbanism, said the Sheridan was "a big important example because it's in New York and it's very visible; it would inspire other people that are trying to do the same thing."

Source: The New York Times - N.Y. / Region, July 13, 2010
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"This ends up being, to be sure, a second best alternative, but it's better than the third best alternative, which is to do nothing." -- Jerold Kayden