Buffalo Rising Online

This national exposure for the Route 5 issue is great news! I've maintained from the beginning that the Rt. 5 project has significance beyond Buffalo, as the need for reconfiguration and removal of urban expressways - especially those that have impacted significant public resources like parks and waterfronts, and those that have divided and devalued urban neighborhoods - is universal for urban areas across upstate New York and everywhere. In a sense, we all have a stake in seeing that this project is done right. Huge thanks are due to Buffalo native Robin Lester, Marketing Manger of PPS, for taking an active interest, and for seizing the opportunity to help us by bringing to bear the exceptional credibility and visibility of the Project for Public Spaces.

The fine City of Buffalo, which with its Olmsted-designed parks, parkways, and traffic circles, originated so many great public spaces so many years before so many other cities, needs to regain the initiative by seizing this opportunity to transform Route 5 into a waterfront boulevard, and remove the elevated waterfront barrier.

As Buffalo-Niagara Riverkeeper recently showed, the opportunity to do this right has never been so tantalizingly close. By keeping up the fight, and continuing to gain fine allies like PPS, this can happen!

i didn't realize downtown buffalo was on the other side of the elevated portion of route 5 all these years i thought that was tift farms adn a bunch of old manufacturing plants

mybuffalo...how dare you bring facts into the middle of a great rant. Natrional exposure?

PS This isn't 20/20 doing a story on the outer harbor. Its just another website that is no different from millions of other websites. YAWN!

until the Tifft Street Connector and the Lift Bridges are constructed to Furhmann Boulevard...a real discussion of Route5 isnt going to happen

Just more proof that Higgins' route 5 project, if finished, will be a giant missed opportunity that we'll be stuck with for decades. Every planner who has visited Buffalo has said it. So has the Waterfront Coalition of a dozen organizations.

Glad BRO is bringing attention to this issue. It's never too late to make positive change. Look at the Commercial Slip.

Rte 5 is the least of Buffalo's problems. Anyone who thinks 4 miles of roadway will have a significant impact on turning the city around,... think again. Downtown looks like crap, the east side is a disaster. That is where the money should be spent.

Sometimes is takes people from the outside looking in to open people's eyes to a mistake about to happen. Locals saying this is going to be a huge mistake obviously doesn't carry much professional weight around here. Maybe some of the prominent planners and critics of urban space from around the country \ world will add a little more heft to the argument.

But then again professionals with training is urban design rarely have a say in what should or should happen in Buffalo. Which is what I feel really holds this city back. We only listen to money, not the better idea, even if down the road the better idea can save the city money.

Johnny, while I might agree that on the surface this isn't the 'big' problem of the city. Although many will tell you that a sign of Buffalo's malaise is its lack of waterfront development. A lack of development that seems attributed it is lack and confusing access patterns created by this highway. So if we fixed and connected this huge section of the waterfront to Buffalo's downtown is a way that allows people and investment to flow smoothly we could change whole perception about the city.

It is also a project that is very different than the two other problems you suggest. That is because we actually have the money to do something about this problem. Unlike the east side or downtown, there is money at the table and being spent to fix this problem. Also, remember that if this was a 'problem' in the first place the state would have never designated so much money to redesign and reconfigure the whole damn thing. The fact that we are going to take that money and rebuild the same thing over again. I feel is going to spit in the face of those who fought to get us this money.

Someone from downstate is going to look at this project and go.. They complained for years about this highway and how it cut off development. We give them money to do something about it... and all they did was dismantle and rebuild the highway.

Sure we are reconfiguring furhman and putting it on one side of the highway but that doesn't require route 5 to be torn down and rebuilt. I feel like the DOT is just doing this to spend money. It will barely solve the main problem that holds back development from this area, which is you need to get in a car and drive over a bridge that scares most people.

To take another route takes too much time and navigating. Once people get back into their cars, the money is gone. They will just go home. so while i would also love to see downtown spruced up and the east side fixed, we don't have any magic wands. What we do have is money designated to rethink, re-envision out waterfront transportation system. I ask everyone here are we really doing that with this money? Whether you are for or against the project i don't think anything sees this as a groundbreaking project.

It is the vast majority of people in this town who pose the real problem.

The group that posts on this site are a small minority.

Until the majority of Buffalo understands the fact that they "don't get it" we will continue to have bad decisions being made.