U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was in Buffalo on Friday to see firsthand how the proposed Kensington Expressway transformation can serve as a national model and meet with community members. With Buffalo among the first in the nation to tap the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act’s Reconnecting Communities Program, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said that Buttigieg’s visit marked a very significant step forward in rectifying the division, public health damage and inequality created by the original expressway through adjacent communities.
“Buffalo neighborhoods have been torn apart by the Kensington Expressway for decades, and this $55 million investment from the Reconnecting Communities Program will help jumpstart the effort to reconnect the Humboldt Parkway community,” said Senator Schumer. “Our infrastructure should connect, not divide our communities … The transformation of the divisive Kensington Expressway will be a game changer for Buffalo and will serve as a model for equity across the nation.”
The Reconnecting Communities program was created in part by Schumer in earlier legislation, and he spearheaded including it in the Bipartisan Infrastructure & Jobs Law to help communities, like Buffalo, remove barriers like old highways and other transportation infrastructure that has limited connectivity and too often left decay and public health legacies in its wake.
This is the first year of the $1 billion dollar program, making Buffalo one of the first communities to receive funding for this historic initiative. The Kensington Expressway project, sponsored by the state with Governor Hochul, will transform the current expressway into a 6-lane tunnel extending from under Dodge Street to Sydney Street. Above ground, Humboldt Parkway would be redesigned not just for cars but for pedestrians and bicyclists with traffic-calming measures, crosswalks, bicycle lanes, and pedestrian and bicycle signals. It would also include a tree-lined walkable linear park in the median with Victorian gardens, sidewalks, and benches, connecting it with the adjacent Martin Luther King Jr. Park. The $55 million Reconnecting Communities grant will go toward funding this vision.
This grant also builds on the $25 million Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grant that Schumer secured last year to help better reconnect Buffalo’s East Side by finally fixing the roadway between Goodell Street and the Kensington Avenue.
Kensington Expressway began construction in the 1950s on what is now known as Route 33 along the path of Humboldt Parkway, replacing what had been a grand, tree-lined boulevard designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux with a below-grade highway that divided and stifled economic growth for the Martin Luther King and Hamlin Park neighborhoods on Buffalo’s East Side.