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03/26/2008
Bright Future of Buffalo's Waterfront Threatened by State Plans to Expand Freeway Infrastructure, Current DOT Plan to Maintain Freeway and Expand Frontage Road Will Limit Access and Development Potential
DOT Shift to Its Boulevard Alternative Would Lay Groundwork for Waterfront Renaissance
Buffalo's Outer Harbor has immense potential to be redeveloped into
valuable urban neighborhoods of lofts, restaurants, shops and parks --
but leaders need to act now to get the streets designed correctly.
If Buffalo does not act now, Norquist warns, the state will forge
ahead with plans to maintain the embanked Route 5 freeway and expand a
major frontage road on the Outer Harbor. Together the dual roads will
occupy a large swath of potentially valuable land. And with an embanked
freeway looming to one side and with no provisions for on-street
parking, the new frontage road will stunt hopes for new development.
A new report by
Marshall’s transportation planning firm Smart Mobility looks at three
Route 5 alternatives developed by the New York State Department of
Transportation and concludes the DOT should shift to its "Boulevard"
plan, which would replace the embanked Route 5 and frontage road with a
single road, an urban boulevard that would enhance waterfront
connectivity and invite the reemergence of valuable neighborhoods. A
new lift bridge and an extension of the boulevard could then replace
the Skyway Bridge.
The urban planning and development organization that Norquist now
leads, the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), has a national program
that examines revitalization in cities such as Portland and Milwaukee
that have replaced waterfront freeways with neighborhood-friendly
boulevards. That program has identified Buffalo and Seattle as two top
candidates for similar transformations.
The current Buffalo report is the second that CNU and its partner in the highways-to-boulevards project,
the Center for Neighborhood Technology, have requested from
Vermont-based Smart Mobility. Released in December 2006, the first
concluded that replacing the Skyway Bridge and the embanked Route 5
with a lift bridge and at-grade boulevard would help unlock sizable
unrealized tax base on the Outer Harbor and ably meet traffic needs,
more than ably in light of the reduced volume on Route 5 following
removal of tolls on the New York State Thruway.Smart Mobility's experience includes transportation and planning
analysis for the state departments of transportation in New York,
Minnesota, Georgia, and New Hampshire among other clients.
Key findings from the new report include:
- "The NYSDOT preferred alternative maintains the elevated bridge and
embanked highway at the expense of valuable waterfront acreage and
ultimately does not create the access necessary for making the
waterfront a destination connected to downtown. The NYSDOT Preferred
Alternative will have many devastatingly negative effects on the
efforts to develop the Outer Harbor as a vital urban, walkable place to
enjoy the Lake Erie waterfront."
- "The NYSDOT 'Modified Improvement' alternative includes 8
lanes of pavement in an area where redevelopment is hoped for, with
four of these lanes high-speed, elevated, and noisy. Our preferred
alternative would be a four-lane avenue with a design speed of 35 mph.
The future traffic projections indicate that four lanes would provide
sufficient capacity for an urban setting."
- The "Boulevard" alternative is far superior to the "Modified
Improvement" alternative because it can easily be adapted to the
removal of the Skyway Bridge, building a new grade-level bridge
connection to downtown Buffalo, and reconfiguration of the Fuhrmann
Avenue/Route 5 corridor into a multimodal street. Because the Skyway
Bridge is currently under study to determine options for its future,
which should include an exploration of "downsizing" to an at-grade
facility, it would be prudent for NYSDOT to pursue the Boulevard
alternative at this time, as it is most adaptable to a range of
strategies for the Outer Harbor. In the Boulevard alternative, Route 5
transitions from the Skyway Bridge into a single 6-lane boulevard. This
plan is highly compatible with removing the Skyway Bridge and
constructing a new at-grade bridge, which could be in one of several
possible locations.
Norquist and Marshall will appear before the Common Council's
Waterfront Development Committee Friday at the request of its chairman
Michael Kearns. Kearns will appear at the Friday a.m. press conference
along with Common Council President David Franczyk and Council
Legislation Committee Chairman Richard Fontana.
"Buffalo’s waterfront could be one of the most attractive
development sites in New York State," said Norquist, "but if the DOT
sticks with its current plan, the waterfront will function as a truck
route. Its development potential will be stunted."
Image: Rendering of proposed Buffalo waterfront boulevard by Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists
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