Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - There's been years of talk about the future of the Scajaquada Expressway (Route 198) that connects the Kensington Expressway (Route 33) and Interstate 190 in the City of Buffalo.
It has been more than 11 years since the tragic death of 3-year-old Maksym Sugorovskiy that led to the speed limit on the entirety of the expressway being dropped to 30 miles-per-hour. Since then, many have tried to get the speed limit raised in parts of the corridor that do not see much foot traffic around the roadway.
Meanwhile, there are others that continue to push for the Scajaquada to be transformed and replaced by a parkway and intersections to replace ramps. This to go along with the transformation of the Kensington Expressway, especially along Humboldt Parkway.
Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan says this project has been looked at under a microscope almost since the minute they built it.
"You can see what it does: It cuts off the park from the cemetery, the History Museum from the [Buffalo AKG] Art Museum, Riverside from the rest of the neighborhoods. It doesn't add much of a bang, but over the years, the state's come up with different proposals to downsize it, to change it, but each of them had been rebuffed by the public," said Ryan on Monday while just outside the expressway.
Just before COVID, the State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) contracted with the Greater Niagara Buffalo Regional Transportation Corporation (GNRBTC) to do a full-fledged community impact study, where they went around and talked to people from the community about the future of the project. When the impact study wrapped up in 2023, a plan called 'One Region Forward' was formulated that would see the Scajaquada transformed back into a parkway.
Since then, though, after the plans were presented that to the state, New York started to backpedal, resulting in the project entering a state of limbo.
Ryan believes, though, that any project associated with the Scajaquada has to include improvements to the Kensington, and vice versa.
"That's the weakness of looking at the Kensington alone: It dumps right into the 33, so you can't make one a parkway or very narrow and then have the other one a big road. They've got to feed in together," Ryan explained. "It's like if you had two pipes: If you want to join them, the pipes have to be the same size. So the plans over the last decades have always been looking at these individually. That's not going to float, and you saw what happened last time they tried to push that plan through at the 33 without looking at the impacts of the 198. The judge said, 'You did it all wrong. You've got to go back to the drawing board.'"
Ryan is hopeful both the Scajaquada and the Kensington will be connected as one project, and that something can progress sooner rather than later to improve both roadways that flow through the City of Buffalo.
"I'm gonna try to use the bully pulpit and to talk about the negative impacts on the 33 and the 198 on the City of Buffalo, on the neighborhoods to try to move a project forward that could help restore our neighborhoods, to make our communities walkable again," Ryan said. "Both of these highways have been a real scar on the City of Buffalo. It's time to knit those communities back together. But you can only do it by substantially changing these roadways."
What Ryan wants going forward is for the city to step up and run the projects as the lead agent.
"We want to be the one doing the community input, working with the engineers, trying to come up with a project that best serves the City of Buffalo," he said. "There's a lot of interest down there, but a lot of the interests are not related to the city. It's how fast I want to get in from somewhere else, or how fast I want to drive trucks through. But that's not of interest to the people who live in the City of Buffalo. So, we would like this project to go forward with the State Department of Transportation being a partner, but the City of Buffalo being the lead agent."
Ryan points to the success the City of Rochester has had in recent years as the lead agent in the transformation of their Inner Loop.
"Right now, that Inner Loop, a big section's down already. You wouldn't even know it's there," Ryan noted. "There's new buildings up, there's expansions of their children's museum. It looks great. So we don't have to go out far down the highway to see, 'Here's a really good model.' But that model was run by the City of Rochester with the New York State Department of Transportation as a co-pilot."
Ryan adds the city has sent a letter to the State DOT expressing its interest in being the lead agent on the project, but has yet to receive any type of formal response.
"For the love of God, after decades-and-decades talking about it, let's get something going"
"For the love of God, after decades-and-decades talking about it, let's get something going"
