What Should Buffalo Do With The Kensington Expressway?

Over the last few months, New York State is moving forward with its plan to cover a section of New York State Route 33, which runs through the remnants of Buffalo's Humboldt Parkway. The plan, as it stands today, is being funded using State and Federal funds and would significantly change the nearly 70-year-old highway traversing several city neighborhoods before it ends in Downtown Buffalo.

The large scope of this project requires state officials to spend time gathering comments and suggestions from community members to ensure that the people's will is considered in making decisions. Officials should take those comments, incorporate what they can into the program, and address any lingering concerns before shovels go in the ground.

Several Groups of People Are Opposing Covering The Expressway(/h3)

As state officials have been gathering comments and suggestions, several community groups have joined to make their voices heard in opposition to this project.

Some of those groups partnered to hold a public meeting on Wednesday, November 8, 2023, at the Delavan-Grider Community Center in Buffalo to vocalize their position and offer the state an alternative to spending more than $1 billion to turn just 1.3 miles of the expressway to a tunnel.

Around 150 people attended the meeting hosted by Colored Girls Bike Too, the Restore Our Community Coalition, and the East Side Parkways Coalition.

During the talk and presentation, the group reasoned why the Kensington Tunnel should not be built, and the Kensington Expressway should be filled in. The filled-in expressway would then be turned into a reimagined Humboldt Parkway - thus restoring the original design created by Fredrick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.

The coalition has created a toolkit with the various documents the Department of Transportation produced, along with their justification for removing the expressway altogether.

What do you think should happen? Should a tunnel be created, or should the expressway be outright removed?