Holy shit, I’m agreeing with Higgins

I finally had the opportunity to listing to WNYMedia’s interview with Congressman Higgins. Who would have guessed that we’d be actually be agreeing on Route 5 issues?

Higgins said, “The fact of the matter is according to the Department of Transportation, you have some 43,000 vehicles that travel from the Southtowns into the city of Buffalo everyday. I think what a boulevard would have created is a Niagara Falls Boulevard on Buffalo’s waterfront – a lot of congestion… a dangerous mix of commercial and commuter traffic. You would also have a situation where there would be a lot of congestion on one roadway. What this does is allow for the passage of commuter and commercial traffic to continue unfettered, but creates a substantially improved parkway to replace Furhman Boulevard.”

We still disagree on the need to demolish the Skyway. Additional connections are needed to connect the inner harbor and the new parkway, but unless there’s a connection from Route 5 to the 190 with enough throughput, that will become the bottleneck, backing up traffic onto Route 5, and therefore negating the point in having both roads. And really, if any area is confusing to navigate by car, it’s the area around the inner harbor, not the outer harbor. I’m down there at least 10 times a year and even with a GPS I still manage to screw up getting back on the 190 or to Route 5 from time to time.

I also agree with Higgins that communication of the current plans is not as clear as it could be. The project has changed too many times for people to keep up with. Let’s spend a fraction of those millions set aside for studies and put it towards building a nice website, laying out the current plans and history of this project for everyone to see.