BUFFALO, N.Y. — The New York State Department of Transportation is extending the comment period for the Kensington Expressway project.
The DOT has two plans on the table. The first plan calls for a $1B cap and tunnel of a little more than 4,000 feet of RT33 between Best Street and Sydney Street.
The second alternative plan? Do nothing.
"We've been hearing a lot of people in the community saying I'm not familiar with the project, I don't know the details of the project, and that's exactly what we don't want," said Susan Surdej, Assistant to the Regional Director/PIO and engineer at the NYSDOT.
The new deadline for the public to submit their comments to the DOT is Friday, November 10th.
If you want to submit a comment for the record, can you do so at this link.
Last week, over 100 members of the public attended an information meeting regarding the Kensington Project. The highly controlled meeting required the public to write down questions and submit them to the moderator, who then asked them to NYSDOT representative Rich Fontana.
Those questions, however, will not be part of the recorded comments for the project. The DOT required those in attendance to fill out a "proper" form with their comments for the record.
The DOT says that they want to hear as many voices as possible for the project.
"If by chance you have not heard of this project, now is the time we want to hear from you," Surdej said. "Community input is going to shape this final project, it has already shaped the project."
One of the big questions from the public, is why not fill-in the Kensington in order to reconnect the community - which is the established goal of the project.
"What we found is there is not the capacity to handle 75,000 cars a day, which use the Kensington expressway," Surdej said. "It's easy to just say, well, people will find their own way, but the radial streets, the 90, and the 190 would all be above capacity."
The DOT, however, did not conduct a dedicated traffic study to determine the impact of filling in the Kensington and how that would affect arterial roads like Walden Ave, Genesee St, Broadway, the 190 and 90.
According to Surdej, the NYSDOT received a traffic analysis from the Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council (GBNRTC).
When the project was first proposed, there were ten alternative plans for the project. Those were whittled down to the tunnel plan, or do nothing.
"They were all eliminated for one reason or another," Surdej said. "The particular scope and objectives of this project at this time are only being met by the alternative that we're putting forward."
If the decision is made not to cap and tunnel a portion of the Kensington, it is likely that nothing to the expressway will be done.
"If this project, whatever form it takes, is not pulled ahead and constructed that $1 billion of transportation funding will be spent, but not in Western New York," Surdej said. "[Most] likely it will be spent in other parts of New York State, because it's dedicated transportation funding."
The deadline to submit a comment for the project is Friday, November 10.