BUFFALO, N.Y. — A group of three people spent hours reading over hundreds of public comment letters to the state on the Kensington Expressway Project. Their determination – the NYSDOT numbers don’t add up.
For neighbors along Route 33, like Terrence Robinson, the one-billion-dollar announcement to restore the Kensington Expressway was originally welcome news.
“The initial reaction was that yes, we should restore the Humboldt parkway,” Robinson said.
After months of back and forth, he no longer feels the same way.
“They are talking about blasting, sawing, and drilling… exposing the immediate community to all of the toxic waste for 4 years, and then we will be disconnected from the 33 on top of it,” Robinson said.
Robinson is a member of the East Side Parkways Coalition.
Three of his fellow members - Morgan Baker, Sean Sweeney, and Jeff Carballada - say the Department of Transportation hasn't been truthful during its gathering of public comments for the project.
Baker and Sweeney happened to read through the public comments for fun, but they felt what they were reading didn’t match the information that they were hearing.
“Those two things didn’t marry well, and we felt we had to look at them one by one,” Sweeney said.
The two of them and Carballada spent more than 100 hours reading over hundreds of public comment letters to the state and comparing their own results to data from the NYSDOT.
“Interestingly enough, our numbers and the NYSDOT numbers, don't match,” Baker said.
The group says that in December, the NYSDOT reported receiving 1,400 opinions and found 48% of people in favor, 41% opposed and 11% neutral.
But, when this group of analysts counted for themselves, they only found 1,310 comments on the NYSDOT’s website, 90 less than the state's report.
On top of that, their data found just 5% neutral, 47% of people in favor, with the majority, 48% opposed.
“The New York State DOT appears to have under-represented comments opposed, over-represented neutral comments and those in favor of the project,” Baker said.
All of this making Robinson even more confident in his opposition.
“I think the analysis of the comments is outstanding, it's critical, it's honest, and it makes it completely aware that the New York State DOT has had their thumb on the scale since they came up with the project,” Robinson said.
In response to these claims the Department of Transportation said in part:
"What we have presented to the public is 100 percent based on community engagement, and we continue to listen to feedback from the community."
They also said that they received 1,310 comments during the formal comment period and there are…
"90 additional comments contained within the appendix of the Environment Assessment that were received previous from our public information meeting held in June through the beginning of the formal comment period in September."
the East Side Parkways Coalition will present its findings to the public Friday evening at 6:30 p.m. at the Delavan Grider Community Center.
Construction on the project, which would put almost a mile of the Kensington underground, is expected to start later this year and last until 2028.
