The nearly $1 billion Kensington Expressway project, with a public cost that exceeds the tab for the new Buffalo Bills stadium, is being fast-tracked toward final approval early next year, but at three public meetings in recent weeks, dozens of people made clear to state Department of Transportation officials they were dissatisfied with the project.
Some called for a broader and more far-reaching assessment of the plan’s possibilities and shortcomings. Many asked for the brakes to be applied for a once-in-a-generation project that large numbers of people, including East Side residents who live near the proposed project, are still only dimly aware of.
Their concerns were echoed last week by the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservatory, which came out against the project in a letter to transportation officials.
At the heart of their complaint is the Hochul administration’s refusal to explore the full restoration of the 1.8-mile Humboldt Parkway, Frederick Law Olmsted’s verdant, tree-lined bridal path that connected Delaware Park and Martin Luther King Jr. Park before being destroyed to build Route 33. That decision has hung over the review process since the DOT ruled out studying a full restoration nearly a year after the project was announced by the governor in January 2022.
The Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy issued a stinging rebuke of the Kensington highway proposal this week in a letter to state transportation…
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