Could Albany be next in line for elevated highway removal? Here is an article by a Times Union writer, which also touches on the impact of Urban Renewal.
A Syracuse highway is coming down. Albany's 787 should follow:
https://www.timesunion.com/churchill...ial%20features
"On Friday, several of the biggest names in New York politics gathered in Syracuse to celebrate razing a piece of Interstate 81.
Kathy Hochul was there. So were Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, along with federal officials. The event, a groundbreaking, was largely a photo op; the decision to remove the highway viaduct had already been announced. Still, the mood was celebratory.
“Finally, this day has arrived,” Hochul said to a crowd gathered in a high school near the highway, adding that the $2.3 billion project is “about righting the wrongs of the past.”
It certainly is. The highway viaduct, built in the early 1960s, blitzed through the city’s historic Black neighborhood, displacing 1,300 people and decimating a vibrant business district. The 15th Ward, as the neighborhood is known, never recovered. Neither did the rest of Syracuse.
The reconstruction project will remove 1.4 miles of elevated highway for a boulevard that will reconnect streets and stitch together neighborhoods divided by the noisy, ugly, pollution-spewing road. The project will also open land for parks and development.
Well, OK. Sounds terrific for Syracuse, a win that followed many years of debate. But you know where I’m going with this and the question I’m here to ask: What about Albany?
As urban highways continue to fall as cities around the country successfully correct stupidity of the past, the more Interstate 787 becomes an outlier deserving of federal dollars and a reconstruction of its own. If Syracuse can remake an obnoxious highway, why can’t Albany? The experiences of other cities show that a similar remake here isn’t a pipe dream.
As I’ve said here before — and yes, I’m aware some of you are tired of hearing it — remaking 787 into a ground-level boulevard is the big project this region needs. It would connect Albany to the Hudson. It would open up land for new waterside parks, recreation, development, residents and tax revenue. It would transform a capital city that, let’s be honest, could use the shot in the arm.
“We can’t wait to be next!” texted Pat Fahy, the assemblywoman from Albany and longtime advocate of remaking 787, when I asked about the Syracuse event. “I truly hope it gives us some momentum.”
Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. Certainly, there are differences between the Syracuse highway and 787.
Albany’s highway generally followed train tracks through industrial areas and (thank goodness) didn’t destroy a neighborhood like the Syracuse road did. Albany’s didn’t divide the city. In a way, then, Interstate 81 is more akin to Empire State Plaza, which displaced roughly 8,000 people and 300 businesses, as well as the arterial that leads from the complex to 787, which cuts the impoverished South End from downtown.
Whatever the differences, the mentality behind the highways was similar. It elevated the automobile, literally and figuratively. It saw cities as places to escape, as quickly as possible. It neglected urban quality of life to benefit growth on the edges.
“As the shift to suburbia started, government infrastructure projects facilitated that by creating the highways that made white flight even easier,"— Hochul said at Friday’s gathering. “That’s what we’re trying to heal.”
If what replaces the Syracuse highway is done right, it will make the city a place where people are more willing to spend time and money — just as opening up the waterfront would boost Albany’s appeal as a destination. Water is a draw. People want to be near it.
Elevated highways? Eh, not so much.
Critics always ask about the impact on traffic flow, to which I often reply that 787, with its spaghetti-noodle ramps and ample arterials, unnecessarily gobbles land. Consider that in places downtown, the highway and associated pavement comprise 11 lanes of roadway, which is just bonkers. 787 doesn’t need to be that wide and wasteful.
I suppose that if we’re looking for reasons to be grumpy, we could gripe about Syracuse moving ahead with concrete progress while Albany… is not, at least with its highway. What’s happening in Syracuse could be happening here if only we’d had more foresight and ambition.
On the other hand, the once-wacky notion of remaking 787 has gone mainstream, with the state Department of Transportation actively studying how the destructive roadway could change. The Syracuse experience, meanwhile, is likely to provide another example of what cities can achieve when they commit to boosting livability above cars and undoing mistakes.
I’m confident our day will come. The 787 we know will eventually go. The question is when. "
This also didn't mention how the removal of the Inner Loop in Rochester has spurred some development that connects Downtown with the SE Quadrant in that city. Buffalo is also looking to address the 33, which split the Hamlin Park neighborhood.
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