By 1967, a plan for a sunken highway pit running from downtown to the Cheektowaga airport had largely been realized. Here, in an illustration commissioned by the City Planning Board, the Kensington Expressway is envisioned to completion. The expressway had been planned since at least 1946, when the New York State Department of Public Works released the Buffalo Urban Area Report, the blueprint for the region’s expressway network.

 

State engineers and their backers had urged quick approvals for the project. In a 1954 public hearing, Erie County Savings Bank President Dexter Rumsey warned the Common Council that unless Buffalo got moving on the Kensington Expressway, “the city is going to slip.” Rumsey said, “Let’s not study any more. Let’s move.” Later that year, the Council voted unanimously to support the State-proposed route. In 1963, the bulldozers began felling the trees of Humboldt Parkway.

 

Today, the New York State Department of Transportation is attempting to pull another fast-one on residents, who are being told that an expedited environmental review should trump citizens’ concerns about the reconstruction of Scajaquada Expressway. The $75 million proposal would change almost nothing about the essential nature of the expressway, a 30 mile-per-hour proposed speed limit notwithstanding. Let’s not study any more, they say. Let’s move. Do you agree? The public is being asked to weigh in on Wednesday, January 25, 2017, 5:30pm, at Fredrick Law Olmsted Public School 64, 874 Amherst Street. This is a chance to right a historical wrong.