| Issue 247 | December 3, 1999 |
Last year,
in response to interest expressed by elected officials, civic leaders and
community groups, the NY State Department of Transportation agreed to analyze
the traffic impacts of closing the Bronx' Sheridan Expressway.
South Bronx community groups like Nos Quedamos and The Point, along with
the Tri-State Campaign, had circulated a concept paper showing that digging
up the little-used Sheridan and replacing it with parkland along the
Bronx River would in fact meet the safety and congestion relief objectives
laid out by NYSDOT in its proposal for a $250 million rehab of the Bruckner-Sheridan
interchange.
In October, at a Bronx transportation forum organized by the NY Metropolitan Transportation Council, a State DOT official announced that the department had finished the first step of its analysis but was awaiting approval to release the data.
The report is still not out - it seems lost in the chain of approvals needed to make it public. This is unfortunate, because interested parties should be as fully informed as possible about potential Sheridan strategies before the DOT decides what to examine in its upcoming environmental impact study of Sheridan-related interchange projects. That study is due to be "scoped" and begin in 2000.
"Concept
paper" on Sheridan Expressway deconstruction:
www.tstc.org/reports/redroad.html
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