Higgins pushes Niagara Scenic Parkway project
Mar. 1—WASHINGTON D.C. — Western New York Congressman Brian Higgins (D-Buffalo) is reaching out to the new secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation to urge that President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan includes some top local projects.
Higgins told DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg that the president's aggressive infrastructure agenda "can start right here in Western New York."
Buttigieg tweeted out this week that "Black and brown neighborhoods have been disproportionately divided by highway projects or left isolated by the lack of adequate transit and transportation resources. In the Biden-Harris administration, we will make righting these wrongs an imperative."
In a letter to Buttigieg, after his tweet, Higgins said the Niagara Regional is a prime example of bad transportation planning.
"Western New York, in particular the cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls, is a case study of this damaging period in urban planning history," Higgins wrote.
In particular the congressman pointed to projects like the Niagara Scenic Parkway, the Skyway and the Kensington and Scajaquada expressways have largely served to obstruct and separate rather than connect people and communities.
"Inspired by the urban design in Paris, France, renowned landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux created a system of parks and parkways throughout Buffalo in the 19th century, the first American city to have such features," Higgins wrote. "Their vision was decimated by urban renewal and autocentric planning efforts of the 1950s and 1960s, which resulted in four highways that bisect city neighborhoods and Olmsted parks, as well as obstruct access to the Lake Erie waterfront and the natural wonder of Niagara Falls."
Higgins has called for the removal of the Moses Parkway. He also advocated for tearing down the Skyway.
The congressman has also pushed for increasing the nation's investment in infrastructure through the "Nation Building Here at Home Act", aimed at investing over a trillion dollars in funding to meet the country's urgent infrastructure needs.
"Like so many similar highways in communities across the country, these scourges of outdated infrastructure have perpetuated systemic racism and inequality, promoted the dominance of the automobile, destroyed green space, increased pollution, and limited public access and progress," Higgins told Buttigieg. "We face a historic opportunity to enact policies that will ensure our nation's cities are livable and sustainable for all residents, and downgrading highways, relics of misguided and at times malicious past federal policy, is a critical step in doing so."
The removal of the Moses Parkway is also a critical piece of Niagara Falls' Master Plan.
