The Tri-State Transportation Campaign has asked the NY State DOT to extend the "scoping" comment period for the environmental impact statement for a project to widen Suffolk County’s Route 347 (and has questioned the adequacy of the scoping process itself). The current deadline is June 6th.

A Tri-State Transportation Campaign staffer has been contacting the DOT via the project’s email address, route347@ekmail.com , since April 27, requesting the information with no success. Public information meetings were held in early May, however, the materials have not been available to people who could not attend the meetings until May 25 when the DOT finally posted the information on a webpage.

In addition, it is not clear that the materials that have been posted on the website constitute a draft scoping document, as required in the environmental review process. If scoping is conducted, a project sponsor is required to submit a draft scoping document "to all involved agencies, and make it available to any individual or interested agency that has expressed in interest in writing to the lead agency." NYCRR § 617.8(b).

From a preliminary look at the Route 347 website (http://www.dot.state.ny.us/reg/r10/ny347/features.html)  it seems that DOT is proposing an old-fashioned and expensive highway widening to reduce congestion. Tri-State and other planning groups have encouraged them to consider a more holistic approach that improves local land use decisions and works towards a Main Street-style corridor.

NYS DOT Region 10 has a history of conducting a closed, "black-box" planning process. We hope that will change with the Route 347 project, and that the concerns of local citizens, elected, and transportation groups will be taken seriously. 

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