BUFFALO, N.Y. — As we have been reporting at 2 On Your Side, the State of New York is planning to spend almost $1 billion on a Kensington Expressway tunnel.
But some members of the community say they do not support the project and that taxpayer money might be better used in a different way. On Thursday some "citizen researchers" raised questions about the DOT's position on the collected public comments on the project.
2 On Your Side was able to get some federal and state response.
In March of 2023, there was a celebratory news conference at the Buffalo Science Museum as U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joined other federal and state leaders to announce $55 million from the Biden Infrastructure Act was going to the nearly $1 billion plan to cap wit a tunnel an eight-tenths-of-a-mile portion of the Kensington Expressway near the museum.
The transportation secretary told those assembled back then that "we look for projects like this one where the community has been leading the way, because this is about empowering communities to define their own future."
Required public input meetings followed. But in November, as the public comment window started to close, opposing viewpoints and a group called the East Side Parkway Coalition emerged.
On Thursday, they presented their analysis of the DOT's collected comments as they disputed a favorable majority report and criticized the process.
Morgan Baker stated their conclusion.
"From the public comments we see a lot of concern that this project doesn't serve the needs of this generation or the next," Baker said.
Her fellow researcher Jeff Carballada added: "We're talking about a truly transformative thing that's going to happen in the city, and I just don't think we can just sit by and rely on this very murky result to make that decision."
The Restore Our Community Coalition, which led the charge for the tunnel-capping project, through chairperson Stephanie Geter, responded that they feel the community is in support and will have more to say in the coming days.
U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins, who helped secure federal funding, is also still in support. He will leave office sometime in February.
The state DOT said it has been "working on a project along the Kensington Expressway for nearly 15 years, and talk of a transportation solution has been going for over three decades. What we have presented to the public is 100 percent based on community engagement and we continue to listen to feedback from the community."
The DOT statement continues that the state and federal governments "have backed this project with $1 billion, and there won't be a better opportunity to move this project forward than right now."
Baker Morgan responded: "That is a manufactured sense of urgency. If the DOT wanted to invest in the East Side, the time to do it probably would have been when the tunnel reached its service life, and so the fact that we are rushing now is unfortunate."