More Buffalonians Disapprove of Kensington Expressway Project

As planning to decide what to do with a section of the Kensington Expressway continues to take form, the opposition to the project continues to build as more members of the community come out to make their opinions known.

The nearly $1 billion public works project has residents and other community stakeholders asking more questions than what there appear to be answers for, which is causing the level of frustration to increase.

What Is The Kensington Expressway Project?

The New York State Department of Transportation, with the support of the Federal Highway Administration, have planned to reconstruction a section of New York State Route 33, which runs through the city of Buffalo, the stretch of route in question is colloquially known as the Kensington Expressway.

Constructed in 1958, the Kensington Expressway project would cost taxpayers around $1 billion to build, and it would add a tunnel cap to the highway, running approximately 1 mile. The covering would attempt to restore a part of the original Humboldt Parkway.

The purpose of the Project is to reconnect the community surrounding the defined transportation corridor and improve the compatibility of the corridor with the adjacent land uses, while addressing the geometric, infrastructure, and multi-modal needs within the corridor in its current location. The transportation corridor is defined as NYS Route 33 (Kensington Expressway) and Humboldt Parkway between Best Street and Sidney Street.
-New York State Department of Transportation

Opposition To The Kensington Project Grows

Since state officials released the Draft Design Report/Environmental Assessment in September 2023, the number of comments in opposition has grown significantly. In addition to the negative comments about the projects, there have been several community meetings where residents have come out against the project itself or requested the state to do additional testing. Among other things, residents are worried about the potential for hazardous and toxic materials to be released into the air in the neighborhood.

If you can put a billion dollar, 5-year construction project through a residential neighborhood and remove 250,000 square feet of asbestos in the course of that, and you can crack the foundation and release gases and radon, then there is no environmental protection under SEQR for anyone else in the state... A state agency that is supposed to protect us, that is nullifying the environmental protection laws in this instance.
-Terrence Robinson, Humboldt Parkway resident speaking with WGRZ-TV

On Thursday, December 21, 2023, the community group We Are Women Warriors hosted another community meeting for neighborhood residents to ask officials from the Department of Transportation various questions, along with giving additional comments about the project. The meeting, which occurred at the Frank E. Merriweather, Jr. Buffalo Branch Library on Jefferson Avenue, was attended by several dozen residents.

There were several stakeholders on hand to answer questions, including Matt Dearing from the Eastside Parkways Coalition, Constance Strother from Preservation Buffalo Niagara, Richard Fontana and Sanjyot Vaidya from NYSDOT, and others.

Read More: Lawsuit Underway To Stop Kensington Expressway Project In Buffalo

The vast majority of comments given during the meeting and Q&A were either against the project or called for the Kensington Expressway to be removed altogether.

With the Final Design Report due in early 2024, we're going to have to wait and see if officials from the DOT take some of these additional comments into consideration.