Albany is at a pivotal moment, and the city and the state can't risk letting the past define the future.
Building off efforts to repair cities like Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse, New York is exploring the future of I-787, the overbuilt highway separating Capital Region communities from the Hudson River and each other.
State DOT published its Planning and Environmental Linkages (PEL) Study in the fall of 2025 and is now moving into the environmental review process, making now a crucial time to take a closer look at the direction the Reimagine I-787 effort is headed. The PEL’s 500-plus pages include some exciting ideas, but there are also some key blind spots state DOT needs to address in order to deliver the changes our communities along the I-787 corridor so crucially need.
The PEL team has done many things well: After extensive public outreach, the study places the need for better connectivity between communities and their riverfront front and center. It also acknowledges the exorbitant cost of maintaining more than one million square feet of overbuilt highway.
The projects identified vary in scale but not in impact. Ambitious efforts like moving the bridge between Albany and Rensselaer and transforming the South Mall Arterial to an at-grade roadway join smaller pitches like the Little River in Menands and the 16th Street connection in Watervliet.
But when it comes to the bigger picture of how changes to I-787 can truly impact these communities, the vision for real, transformative change is missing. To restore the health and vibrancy of our Hudson Riverfront communities, we must stop prioritizing the travel times of people driving through our cities. Simply put, we cannot solve the problems of I-787 using the same thinking that created it.
Yet the PEL relies heavily on level of service analysis to measure each concept and determine what’s possible in Downtown Albany. This is a narrow-minded metric (even according to U.S. DOT) that really only measures how people behind the steering wheel are affected.
Instead, state DOT should also be considering impacts to vehicle miles traveled (VMT), multimodal level of service, bicycle level of stress, value of recovered land and transit service.
For decades, I-787 rapidly accelerated the conversion of farmland into low-density, single-family subdivisions, strip malls and big box stores, increased VMT, and demanded the construction of roadways dedicated solely to moving motor vehicle traffic as quickly as possible. We need a bold vision to steer this reimagination, and fortunately, other agencies are stepping up to provide one.
Empire State Development has outlined a roadmap for transformational changes through Gov. Hochul’s Championing Albany’s Potential (CAP) Initiative. The CAP project team recently published their Downtown Albany Strategy, with a vision to repair decades of anti-urban decision-making and a focus on bringing residents to Downtown Albany.
At Capital Streets, we’ve been highlighting the importance of high-impact connectivity improvements throughout the CAP process and it’s exciting to see what’s been included in this strategy. The real work is just getting started, and we remain dedicated, along with dozens of other organizations, to fighting for the prioritization of our communities over commute times.
Now we need Reimagine 787 to align with the CAP initiative’s vision for Downtown Albany, facilitating the heart of the region’s transformation into more than a commuter pass through. This doesn’t mean straying from the corridor’s crucial role as an efficient way of moving people, but it does require using our imaginations (and better methodologies) to assess how we can improve on mid-20th century planning.
Crucially, the I-787 corridor needs to prioritize dedicated infrastructure for more than single-occupancy vehicles. With dedicated transit lanes, I-787 can facilitate the development of valuable urban land, including Downtown Albany’s “parking lot district”, instead of inhibiting it.
People using micromobility devices also deserve dedicated infrastructure within the corridor’s right-of-way. E-bikes have already delivered easy, affordable transportation for thousands of New Yorkers, and state DOT can make trips between Downtown Troy and Downtown Albany via e-bike a sub-25-minute commute, while also making it safer and more convenient than driving.
The development of I-787 has played an inherent role in shaping the Capital Region -- in many ways at the detriment of the cities along the Hudson River. How I-787 is reimagined, and eventually reconstructed, will continue to shape the region.
It's time to put downtown vibrancy before commute times and people before level of service by reimagining 787 as a multimodal corridor that connects our cities, instead of a highway that takes from them. As the Downtown Albany Strategy puts it, this is Albany’s moment.
