A glaring divide exists between community members and those with economic interests in the Kensington Expressway tunnel-and-cap project, according to an opposition group that researched all of the public comments.
Poring over 1,310 individually composed, prewritten and copied-and-pasted comments, a three-person team with the East Side Parkways Coalition found a disconnect between comments generated by private citizens, which overwhelmingly oppose the project, and those with financial or economic short-term interests in the plan, including trade union workers who support the project.
“There is no public consensus on whether this project is good for the future of Buffalo, and even among supportive comments, there appears to be confusion on what the project actually is,” said Morgan Baker, one of three coalition members who examined each submission to the state Department of Transportation during a now-closed public comment period.
Overall, the East Side Parkways Coalition found that 48% of the comments were opposed to the project, 47% in favor and 5% neutral. The margin of error was plus or minus 1%.
The 654 individual comments make up roughly half of the submissions, with 499 expressing opposition.
“What’s clear from the data is that there is no public consensus on whether this project should move forward,” said Baker, who along with Sean Sweeney and Jeff Carballada read and coded the comments, then generated graphs and pie charts to help interpret the data.
Their results will be presented during a public meeting at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the Delavan-Grider Community Center, 877 E. Delavan Ave.
A December invite-only stakeholders meeting held by the state DOT showed 669 people in favor of the project, with 571 opposed and 160 classified as neutral. In November, the agencies internal numbers showed 322 in favor and 359 opposed, with 124 neutral.
The DOT environmental assessment now drawing to a close does not categorize the…
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