What's In a Name? Not Robert Moses

The New York State Legislature approved a bill earlier this month that changes the name of the Robert Moses Parkway in Niagara County, reports Bill Mahoney.

Republican state Sen. Rob Ortt sponsored the bill, which passed unanimously with no debate earlier this month. Ortt is quoted in the article explaining the reasoning behind removing Moses's name from the parkway.

I think from a tourism standpoint a lot of people felt that 'Robert Moses Parkway' didn’t really say anything about Niagara or Niagara County or anything about the area…. And it was a name that a lot of people today, maybe driving the parkway, don’t know who that is or why it’s important to the area. And while there’s certainly a significance there, I think the feeling was, amongst the localities, that changing the name to the Niagara Scenic Parkway is more in line with what we’re trying to promote, which is Niagara and Niagara County and Niagara Falls.

The parkway joins a growing list of projects from the Moses era getting new names, along with what Mahoney describes as a "broader effort to resist naming government holdings after living figures." 

[Updated March 23, 2016] New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced a $40 million plan to remove two miles of the Robert Moses Parkway earlier this week. An article by Nancy Fischer has more.