New York expressway may be razed

The possibility of removing the 1.25-mile Sheridan Expressway (I-895) in New York’s South Bronx is being studied by the New York State Department of Transportation. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign and other groups, including the Congress for New Urbanism, have advocated tearing out the 48-year-old expressway, saying this would improve life in an asthma-plagued neighborhood and give residents better access to open space along the Bronx River. Groups such as Tri-State and the Southern Bronx Watershed Alliance have called for building more than 1,200 affordable housing units along with commercial and industrial space and community amenities in the expressway’s footprint and nearby — occupying a total of 28 acres.

DOT spokesman Adam Levine told New Urban News the department is conducting an environmental review of the transportation options and will consult with community boards this fall. A decision is to be announced by the end of 2011. This July, DOT released traffic projections that were alluded to in a July 13 New York Times article, available here. "We're very skeptical of these projections," Kyle Wiswall at Tri-State told New Urban News, because they were based on a model that, according to his organization, overestimates how much truck traffic there will be in this location, near a major food distribution center at Hunts Point. 

Two alternatives being studied by DOT would each include construction of an access ramp from the Bruckner Expressway to Hunts Point, easing access to the market. The biggest question still in debate is whether to rip out the Sheridan, which currently carries 50,000 vehicles a day. Wiswall's argument that the traffic modeling process amounts to "junk science" can be found here.