The New York State Department of Transportation has quietly announced that it was pausing work on a controversial highway expansion in the Hudson Valley that locals opposed.
Earlier this month, the agency posted, but did not distribute, a statement on its website announcing that the Route 17 widening project in the Catskills — long regarded as one of the biggest highway boondoggles in the state — had been put on ice.
"State Department of Transportation has been evaluating the project alternatives while engaging with stakeholders and the public," state DOT Region 8 Acting Director Jim Rusak said in the buried statement. "As a result, it's become clear that more time is needed to re-assess the project alternatives in consideration of feedback received and ensure compliance with the new federal requirements and guidelines."
NY Focus first reported the very soft announcement.
For years, state DOT had its chrome-plated heart set on adding a third lane in each direction to 30 miles of Route 17 in Orange and Sullivan counties, using the long-debunked argument that the third lane would decrease congestion, a concept that only the most ignorant planners hold these days.
For years, multiple governors pushed for the expansion, even though the DOT noted that spending $1.3 billion to add a third lane would save drivers six minutes during peak travel times by the far off year of 2050.
The piddling time savings, plus the fact that expanding a highway runs counter to the state's mandated efforts to reduce transportation emissions, galvanized local opposition to the project and led to the announced pause.
Of course, state officials have not ruled out the possibility of expanding the highway, since one alternative on the table calls for expanding 20 miles of the road instead of 30 miles. Advocates are calling on Gov. Hochul to pause that idea, too.
"We applaud the governor and the Department of Transportation for taking the time to pause this project really reassess the alternatives based on community feedback, and we are still hoping that they take this time and reflect and then take the highway expansion out of the proposed alternatives," said Catskill Mountainkeeper spokesperson Taylor Jaffe.
Catskill Mountainkeeper and other member of an advocacy coalition called the ReThink Route 17 Alliance recently issued a report showing how the state could spend money on safety and transit-focused projects in the region, including $10 million on direct transit connectivity on Route 17 itself, $5 million to double the number of bus routes in Sullivan County, $100 million to pave and fix the existing Route 17 or $107 million on a regional rail trail. All 13 possible projects would cost just $400 million, leaving almost $1 billion for other area improvements.
State DOT's decision to pause the Hudson Valley expansion came days after the agency agreed to call off the construction of a "traffic diversion" road while it made repairs to the Cross Bronx Expressway, which local Bronxites objected to because it amounted to a stealth expansion of the notorious highway.
With the state making a U-turn on a pair of highway expansions, local transit advocates said that New York should make a larger turn away from spending billions of federal and state dollars on projects that will only lead to more cars on the road.
"Community organizing across the state is working and plans for costly wider highways are falling apart," said Riders Alliance Director of Communications Danny Pearlstein. "New York should reinvest the project savings in more affordable and better transportation options."
It's unclear if Gov. Hochul will heed that advice — or whether she paused the Route 17 expansion for the right reasons (because it's a waste of money) or for a wrong one: the project was backed by upstate Sen. James Skoufis.
As Politico reported last week, Hochul vetoed a bunch of Skoufis bills — including fairly non-controversial measures that would, say, regulate online grocery delivery services, require nursing homes to designate storage spaces for deceased peoples’ bodies and bolster the state’s Freedom of Information Law — because the upstate Democrat has "emerged as a forceful critic of her administration."
Skoufis “should not be surprised by these vetoes,” one source told Politico.
In all, Hochul vetoed seven Skoufis bills. There is some concern that she may even veto Skoufis's bill to allow birth control pills to be bought over the counter, a practice common elsewhere in the country.
