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Whose road is it anyway? State route repairs often paid for by cities

A new state program provides funds for cities to care for state routes within their borders.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Studios for Channel 2 are on Buffalo Delaware Avenue, which is also State Route 384.

So, say there was a pothole on Delaware, or a stretch of the road that needed repaving. That would be state government’s responsibility to fix, right?

Not really, says State Senator Tim Kennedy.

“In the past, the cities been asked to take care of state routes when the state ending its funding at the city line. That’s no longer the case,” he said.

Kennedy, chairman of the State Senate Transportation Committee, explained that for decades, that's how funding worked for state routes. There was money for suburban communities to take care of the roadways, but for cities.

And for many cities, population has declined, often meaning there are few tax dollars coming in, meaning less money for repairing streets, including state routes.

But in this year’s state budget is a new road funding program, the City Touring Routes program. It funnels money into cities to fix up and beautify state routes passing though its borders.

For Buffalo, this means an additional $8.7 million to address Niagara Street, Main Street, Delaware Avenue, South Park Avenue and other state roads within the city.

Mayor Byron Brown is pleased because, in his view, “Good roads ... good infrastructure is very important to business recruitment ... and business retention in our community.”

On Friday afternoon, Mayor Brown and Senator Kennedy held a news conference in Buffalo to announce record funding available for future City of Buffalo infrastructure projects.

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