Highway Removal vs. Highway Redesign: Redressing Past Wrongs While Addressing the Decay of America’s Most Ambitious Public Works Project

Abstract

Reconnecting The Best Planned City

This is a moment in time, a crossroads even, when public planning processes will either continue to capitulate to the unilateral assumption of retaining existing highways, expressways and transportation corridors, or to insist on a common sense case-by-case approach whereby a clean slate evaluation is started for every transportation project. In Buffalo, New York, where thousands of lives and billions of dollars in future urban developments are at stake, an unbiased approach to evaluating crumbling transportation infrastructures has become an urgent and critical need. In particular, the Kensington Expressway - Route 33 (hereinafter referred to as “Expressway”) is at an advanced age; it was initially constructed as an urban renewal and racism-by-design highway that gutted the East Side of Buffalo in the 1960s.  The East Side, an area that is home to over 80% of all Black Buffalonians, was once graced with the Humboldt Parkway. Landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, who proclaimed Buffalo to be “the best planned city, as to streets, public places, and grounds, in the United States, if not in the world,” Humboldt Parkway was an idyllic greenscape and oasis for recreation, fellowship, and active living that was demolished and replaced by the Expressway (Figure A) (Supplemental Figures 1 and 2).^[1]

Now, the Expressway is a constant source of noise and air pollution. These environmental hazards are deleterious to human health and wellbeing as well as the climate and sustainability. Specifically, fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a modulator and contributor of the climate crisis, is 26% to 28% above average on the East Side compared to the entire Buffalo and Niagara region.^[2-6]  Vehicular emissions, including PM2.5, have contributed to disparately high rates of chronic diseases and illnesses, such as asthma, heart disease, cancers, mental disorders, and even a five to ten year shorter life expectancy among Black vs. White Buffalo residents.^{[7, 8]} The University at Buffalo (UB) Department of Architecture Small Built Works class documented these conditions specifically to Humboldt Parkway neighborhoods using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) Environmental Justice Screen Tool (Supplemental Figure 3-5). Furthermore, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) just released the Community Air Quality Initiative conducted in 2021-2022.  This report revealed that levels of PM2.5 are highest in Buffalo and “Above Focus Spot Threshold” especially in Hamlin Park and Trinidad, neighborhoods that straddle the Expressway and Scajaquada Expressway - Route 198 (Supplemental Figure 6).^[5]  Just last year,  the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) released the Expressway Draft Design Report/Environmental Assessment (DDR/EA) and in Appendix D7, projected vehicle exhaust plumes were depicted spewing 900-feet out each portal end (Supplemental Figure 7). The UB Small Built Works class overlaid these NYSDOT’s projected plumes back onto the neighborhoods with pin-mapped locations of schools, churches, medical, and youth facilities (Supplemental Figure 8).

These stakes and costs, namely the health of East Side communities, are too high to default to a one-size-fits-all approach for highway remediation. Based on these unique set of circumstances in Buffalo, we developed a five tier Transportation Infrastructure Evaluation System (TIES), an objective set of criteria for the remediation and/or maintenance of any given transportation corridor, especially urban highways. “Tier One – Complete Highway Removal” describes what is needed in Buffalo for basic health, and environmental, social, and transportation justice. Building on what we have learned in our own advocacy, this paper presents TIES, which could contribute to a nationwide discussion for setting highway maintenance and evaluation criteria.  Additionally, TIES could move the needle towards a standardization of criteria that will be essential for all impending human health and global sustainability issues in the upcoming decades. These intersecting points of concern, although magnifying, are not new. But, in order to fully understand the breadth and depth of said issues, it is necessary to take a step back and review how we got to this point.