Bury It or Not: The Kensington and Scajaquada Expressway Project

Work still hasn’t quite begun on the controversial effort to turn a stretch of the Kensington Expressway (Route 33) and Scajaquada Expressway (Route 198) into a tunnel in the name of reconnecting Humboldt Parkway between Agassiz Circle and Delevan Avenue. 

Monday morning, the community group fighting this effort to try and fully reconstruct the tree-lined, park-like environment that was removed when the 198 was built is hosting a press conference to continue its fight for a greener, healthier solution. 

The East Side Parkways Coalition will host the media event at 10 a.m. Monday on Humboldt Parkway at Northampton Street, just north of the Science Museum, to discuss the latest information about the project. This is in advance of a court hearing, currently scheduled for Friday, October 25, on the third floor of the Erie County Courthouse, 92 Franklin Street, at 2 p.m. The hearing has been scheduled to determine whether the New York State Department of Transportation needs to complete an environmental impact statement (EIS) about the project, something the state has not yet completed and said is not necessary. 

The group also says it will announce its application of an injunction to try and prevent work from beginning until other options are considered and other concerns are heard and addressed. 

If the proposed tunnel, which has the support of New York State Governor Kathy Hochul and some local officials, is allowed to move forward, it will require “20 feet of additional digging, covered by a replica parkway that stops 2,000 feet short of connecting to the planned restoration of Humboldt Parkway between Agassiz Circle and Delavan,” the group says. 

The current design has “disastrous consequences: 1) The tunnel will cement in place that Delaware Park and Martin Luther King Park will never be connected by a parkway because extension of a prospective tunnel would run into the buried Scajaquada Creek; and 2) concentrated exhaust plumes will be blown out the tunnel portal ends towards dozens of schools, youth facilities, parks, museums, and churches.” 

Instead, the East Side Parkways Coalition, in partnership with the Restore Our Community Coalition (ROCC), wants a different way forward, one that would eliminate the roadway altogether and instead return to the original design of the region, in which Delaware Park and MLK Parks are connected and the streets between the two are greener and healthier for the community that lives there. 

Already, there are at least five lawsuits filed against the project on behalf of dozens of residents and organizations, suggesting the health impacts of building a tunnel over the existing expressway would be damaging to people who live above the road, causing more pollution to be concentrated at the beginning and end of the tunnel and disproportionately affecting the people who live closest. At least one lawsuit claims the Federal Highway Administration neglected to consider the larger environmental impacts of building a tunnel by failing to require an environmental study.