We have arrived at a time where a public reckoning is sought for Route 33’s negative impact on Buffalo’s East Side. Many older Buffalonians are still reeling from the horror of sprawl development that compromised the city’s neighborhoods. To such an effect that many younger Buffalonians are less aware of how much the city’s landscape has changed since before their time, when the city was an industrial powerhouse of 600,000 residents.
Yet at the same time, many older residents are coming forward with their untold stories of how Humboldt Parkway’s erasure led to a corresponding decline in surrounding property values and closure of businesses along Jefferson and Fillmore Avenues. To such an effect that over the past several years, high school and college students have selected the story of Humboldt Parkway for their school reports pertaining to local history or urban planning.
When a long-neglected consensus begins to step out of the haze of resignation, the powers that have been accustomed to doing next to nothing about it struggles to deal with a public demanding better standards of living.
Let’s not forget how NYSDOT stalled progress on right-sizing the 198 to 30 mph. For at least a decade, city residents advocated to reconfigure the expressway into something more compatible with its path thru Delaware Park and along Scajaquada Creek. The project was doomed to languish under DOT’s fear mongering, insisting any meaningful overhaul would cause unacceptable traffic backup, until an unfortunate accident in 2015 changed everything. Here we are now, 8 ½ years later: the 198 remains at 30 mph, having never caused the nightmare scenario we were expected to believe would happen.
A corrupt transportation bureau that manipulates rather than informs the masses about the best transit policy for Western New York has long nourished a misplaced sense of entitlement among motorists. While some bemoan 198’s reconfiguration, bear in mind that those also balking at restoring Humboldt will not lose their homes, jobs, businesses, or even their privilege to drive around the city.
Who then is the Humboldt Parkway project for?
Humboldt’s spotlight under President Biden’s infrastructure program is a clear acknowledgement how urban expressways caused net losses for our economic, environmental, and social health. Those advocating for a complete restoration of Humboldt Parkway understand the futility behind appeasing to a demographic that refuses to take the project seriously. From there, restoring Humboldt means reviving an important piece of Buffalo’s street grid that was integral to its urban ecosystem. Restoring Humboldt means allowing residents on Gillette Avenue to walk to the opposite side of the parkway to meet with friends at the Em Tea Coffee Cup Café (80 Oakgrove Ave), without adhering to the car-centric detour to Kensington Avenue. Restoring Humboldt means giving parents an opportunity to walk their children down a safe, green pathway on weekends for a day at the Science Museum.
As we navigate yet another recession, the call for the 33’s removal comes from a deeper desire not to pass an infrastructural burden onto the next generations. Will Buffalo still be arguing 70 years from now when the “right time” will be to repair expressway walls? Or whether anyone should continue to tolerate depressed property values from the expressway as a “necessary evil”?
The city needs be given the freedom to part ways with an expressway that failed to generate the investments it was sold upon. Let Buffalo grow beyond its mistakes. Let city residents chart the course for their own neighborhoods. We are past due for finding a trustworthy transportation policy that puts communities first.