Highway Removal

Since it was built in the 1950s, the elevated highway has stifled downtown and separated it from Syracuse University. Removing it could be a transformative city-building project, but Cuomo is waffling.

Speaking in Syracuse yesterday, Governor Andrew Cuomo appeared to indicate support for the removal of 3.75 miles of Interstate 81, the aging elevated highway that cuts through the heart of downtown.

The headline is no joke. In his sixth year governing the state of New York, Andrew Cuomo is on a bit of a roll when it comes to urban planning and city-based economic development. Cuomo and his administration have announced or budgeted for multiple projects over the past few months that promise to heal urban neighborhoods by repairing the damage inflicted by mid-century highways.

After years of wrangling, advocates, businesses, and elected officials have gotten behind a city plan to convert the Sheridan Expressway into a boulevard and take trucks off local streets by building direct ramps from the Bruckner Expressway to Hunts Point. Now it's up to the state to turn the plan into reality, and the first step is funding an environmental impact statement for the new ramps. For help, Bronx advocates are looking to similar projects across the state.

After nearly two decades of advocacy and planning to transform the Sheridan Expressway, South Bronx residents and businesses have a plan they agree on. The next step: Governor Cuomo's State DOT must launch an environmental review to begin implementing the plan. The State Senate included $3 million for the review in its budget proposal [PDF]. With a unanimous 10-0 vote this afternoon, the City Council transportation committee urged the state to follow through and conduct the study. The full City Council is expected to endorse the request tomorrow.

When the state Department of Transportation studied removing the lightly-used Sheridan Expressway, it considered two scenarios. One predicted conditions with the Sheridan kept as is. The other imagined closing the highway to traffic without making any other changes -- simply fencing off the 1.25 mile structure.

Coming two days after her confirmation as the new commissioner of the state DOT, Joan McDonald's keynote speech at today's annual meeting of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council offered her the chance to lay out her agenda for statewide transportation policy. McDonald's remarks should provide cause for optimism among New Yorkers hoping for a more progressive transportation system: She strongly endorsed smart growth principles and indicated to Streetsblog after her speech that she welcomes the planning process that could advance the Sheridan Expressway teardown.

With a new administration at the state DOT, now is a critical moment for the fight to tear down the under-used Sheridan Expressway and turn the area into new housing, jobs, and public space. Tonight, bring your questions and ideas to a town hall hosted by the South Bronx River Watershed Alliance.

At a public meeting last night, the state Department of Transportation released a traffic analysis of the proposal to tear down the Sheridan Expressway, the Moses-era "highway to nowhere" that separates Bronx residents from the Bronx River waterfront. The main conclusion appeared to bode poorly for the plan to replace the highway with housing and parks: According to the state DOT, removing the Sheridan would force traffic onto local streets.