The New York State DOT's response to the proposal by Bronx groups, the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance and the Tri-State Campaign to decommission the Sheridan Expressway and turn it into parkland admits that the road is underutilized and says the proposal is "provocative and worthy of additional debate."

But the DOT adds that a better idea might be to boost Sheridan Expressway traffic volumes by building a new link between the Sheridan and the nearby Bronx River Parkway. The link would likely parallel the Cross-Bronx Expressway along 177th Street.

That idea is likely to be a non-starter among residents on nearby blocks, and with advocates for nearby schools and daycare and senior centers. South Bronx community leaders generally feel that highway construction has severely hurt the borough by severing and blighting communities, and by polluting the air. A look at a map reveals that the South Bronx is closely surrounded by interstate-style highways. The area's childhood hospitalization rate for asthma is already ten times higher than the national average.

For these reasons, a number of civic organizations conceived and embraced the idea of removing the Sheridan. A number of Bronx elected officials are also sympathetic with the idea and are weighing public endorsements of it. They are likely to take a dim view of plans to justify the Sheridan's existence by funneling extra traffic onto it.

A general rule of traffic in congested areas is that it will grow to fill the space available. The proposed Bronx River Parkway-Sheridan connection may ease some vehicle trips, but it would also generate new trips.

Like the Sheridan itself, the link would be redundant, because already imposed over the Bronx' dense neighborhoods is an interlinked lattice-work of high-volume highways composed of the Major Deegan, Bruckner and Cross-Bronx Expressways and the Bronx River and Hutchinson Parkways. The Sheridan and Bronx River Parkways provide additional links between the Cross-Bronx and the Deegan/Bruckner, which themselves intersect at two points.

The remove-the-Sheridan movement grew out of a NY State DOT proposal to rebuild the Bruckner/Sheridan interchange at a cost of $245 million. That project's goals, as articulated by the DOT, would be met by removing the Sheridan, and thus the interchange, and constructing a special truck route from the Bruckner to the Hunts Point Market along Edgewater Road.

See information related to this article:

• Click here to see the Campaign's proposal to transform the Sheridan Expressway into parkland.