A court challenge to the Kensington Expressway project filed by a Humboldt Parkway couple was dismissed in State Supreme Court Thursday on administrative grounds.
Justice Daniel J. Furlong said the appeal, filed in December by Terrence Robinson and Marcia Ladiana, was premature because a report by the state Department of Transportation had not yet been finalized.
He also said the type of legal challenge itself, known as a mandamus, was not “the proper remedy” for the couple. He noted the use of mandamus “is an extraordinary action only used in rare circumstances for administerial actions.”
“After careful review and oral argument, the court is going to grant the motion to dismiss,” Furlong said, before adding, “The court is not judging on the merits of the arguments. It’s a procedural dismissal.”
The state’s plan calls for a tunnel that stretches from Dodge Street, near Martin Luther King Jr. Park, to Sidney Street, with a cover that has trees and other landscape features to mimic a portion of the original Humboldt Parkway designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.
Crossings to reconnect some of the neighborhoods Route 33 divided are part of the plan, which wasn’t signed off on by the Federal Highway Administration until February.
Robinson and Ladiana are members of the East Side Parkways Coalition, which wants to restore Humboldt Parkway by filling in the highway between Delaware and Martin Luther King Jr. parks. The group also wants the state to conduct a health study and address the chronic conditions that have long plagued residents on both sides of the Kensington.
The lawsuit contended the DOT failed to comply with the State Environmental Quality Review Act and the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in choosing not to conduct a comprehensive environmental impact statement for the project, but instead a less stringent environmental review.
“We are here in this court today to ask that the court compel the respondents to…
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