The New York State Department of Transportation is starting from the ground up on a project to possibly reconnect the part of Buffalo’s East Side currently divided by the Kensington Expressway.
In an announcement made Wednesday afternoon, Richard Fontana, special assistant at the state DOT, said the agency will conduct a full environmental impact statement on a project on Route 33.
That full EIS will involve several community meetings set to kick off in October, Fontana said during a press conference at the agency’s regional office in Buffalo.
The DOT will then take public input and “see what project is buildable,” Fontana said.
Options for projects include a tunnel over the expressway – like that previously proposed by the agency – and fully removing the expressway in favor of restoring Humboldt Parkway.
Once the desired project is chosen, the DOT will then embark on reviewing the environmental impacts of it as well as all proposed alternatives, Fontana said. The EIS process is expected to take at least two to three years, he added.
The DOT’s announcement comes after Erie County Supreme Court Justice Emilio Colaiacovo in February ruled the state should have conducted a proper environmental review of the tunnel project before moving forward. In his ruling, he required the state to conduct a full environmental impact statement if it chose to move forward with the project.
The future of the Kensington Expressway appears uncertain after the state Department of Transportation decided not to appeal a court ruling regarding the planned tunnel project that could have reconnected a portion of Buffalo’s East Side.
The state had previously spent decades working with community groups to push forward the tunnel project, which would have involved covering Route 33 for three-fourths of a mile from Dodge Street near Martin Luther King Jr. Park north to Sidney Street. The tunnel would have then be topped with trees and grass, and included road and pedestrian crossings to reconnect neighborhoods in the area split by the Kensington.
The tunnel was proposed to reconnect Buffalo’s East Side. The area now taken up by the Kensington Expressway used to be where Humboldt Parkway – similar to Bidwell, Chapin or Lincoln parkways – wound through neighborhoods until the route’s construction in the 1960s.
But opposition to the tunnel project became fierce even as it was slated to receive more than a billion dollars from state and federal sources. Critics said the tunnel project didn’t go far enough to reconnect the East Side and the state should instead pursue fully removing the Kensington Expressway to restore Humboldt Parkway.
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Colaiacovo sided partially with the critics, and noted in his February ruling that the state didn’t properly review the tunnel project and all of the environmental impacts it could have on the region.
“We’re now confronted with a completely different landscape,” Fontana said Wednesday. “There’s new leadership in Washington and different policies and fiscal priorities as it relates to transportation. I want to be clear about this, the Department of Transportation remains committed to doing a project along the 33 expressway.”
Fontana titled the DOT’s new initiative “Queen City Forward.”
The DOT will be conducting a nationwide search for a new project director and then kick off an “outreach and listening tour beginning in October,” Fontana said.
“We want to hear from as many people as possible before we formulate a new plan for the project along the 33,” Fontana said.
The DOT will also be conducting a traffic study in addition to the EIS process.
“We intend to do an in-depth analysis of where those 75,000 cars a day would go if we fill in the Kensington and what the air quality impacts will be if traffic is diverted to other parts of the city,” Fontana said.
The appeal filed last week by the East Side Parkways Coalition and residents living around Route 33 focuses on the public trust doctrine and New York’s Green Amendment.
Fontana also noted that the legal proceedings surrounding the Kensington Expressway project have impacted the agency’s plans related to the Scajaquada Expressway. The agency no longer plans to begin its scheduled study of the Scajaquada corridor this year due to its focus on the Kensington, he added.
With all eyes on the Kensington Expressway, there are a number of ways the road could be reimagined.
“We’re starting fresh,” Fontana said. “The EIS process will not start with one project, of course. Multiple items will go into the EIS, multiple things will be studied.”
Reach climate and environment reporter Mackenzie Shuman at mshuman@buffnews.com or 716-715-4722.
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Mackenzie Shuman
Environment and climate reporter
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