It really blows my mind that someone thinks that doing anything other than knocking down the skyway is logical. They are trying to build a family friendly place that will attract people there year round. Who wants to go ice skating in the canal with an expressway 100 ft. above you?
Leave one section for an observation deck and maybe one attraction.
I never understood the hate for the skyway…
Those ideas all look awesome and extremely far fetched but fuck it, dream big Buffalo
I think the feds should pay for us to have a tunnel under the buffalo river with exits to the outer harbor and south buffalo. I mean Pittsburgh has an effing tunnel through a mountain and a bunch of awesome bridges. when are we going to get thrown a bone? I think buffalo really got shafted on infrastructure projects over the last 50 years compared to similar sized cities.
Then we could leave up the Kelly island to outer harbor section of the skyway for a cool observation tower and or attraction
Bump. Let’s see what they come up with.
Aim for the Sky: The Buffalo Skyway Corridor Competition. New York State is calling on teams of the nation’s top urban designers, economists, planners and architects to compete in generating a vision for the Buffalo Skyway Corridor.
Do once and do it right, replace it with a tunnel. I understand its probably the most expensive option but I think it really should be the only the option given the added green-space and the added benefit of negating winter weather issues,
Yeah I think a tunnel would be prime.
That picture I posted really shows how open the outer harbor is when it comes vacant land.
Top submissions are up:
https://esd.ny.gov/skywayideas
There are 16 of them and I’m still reading through… all the while keeping in mind the likelihood that nothing will happen, lol.
I hate all of them.
A tunnel should have been an option
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Build an artificial lake and dam and make the cars go on a ferry.
The fact that none of them really fully remove the skyway is a little shitty. It would be nice to see that go. The beach one is a little ridiculous… Look how much the skyway already costs to maintain, you want someone to have to maintain a whole beach, activities, and a giant bubble… RIGHT! lol
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO STUPID
LoL GAYYYYY
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Drivers that currently use the Skyway would be given alternatives including a reestablished South Michigan Avenue bridge, a new road near Terminals A and B that would intersect with Ohio Street, and the Tifft Street Extension crossing the Buffalo River to Elk Street.
Question: is the cost to do this alternate routing built into the cost of this project?
Shouldnt they be thinking of better development possibilities with a $600M price tag? Does the skyway really hinder waterfront development that much?
OK so I finally had a few minutes to review this thing. Few thoughts:
The proposal removes nearly all of the marinas in the outer harbor. RCR is totally gone, lol. Nothing in the proposal suggests where all of these boats will go.
They do mention several ways to get traffic into and out of the city and it looks like they put the best face on it by accounting for volume… but not time.
I love how things look like they’re sketched in pen, lol. “let’s just draw buildings on Gerdau Metals property and see if anyone notices.”
Something, something, something, transportation equity… 
Where’s the new Bills stadium?
I’m being critical because I want this to work. I guess we’ll see.
All I know is when I went to pick up my boat after having a new bimini boot made at Bills Boat Works and took the skyway detour it was a total nightmare of traffic at 4pm. I can only imagine at 5pm. If you’re going to remove the skyway as a commuter route Ohio, Louisiana, Ganson and S. Michigan need to be completely overhauled to support the traffic volume.
None of these plans seem to take into account just how much traffic flows off the 190, over the skyway, and out Rt5.
Regardless of the plans for the Skyway, I feel like the city either way should be addressing the traffic and road situation from Rt5 to 190 and surrounding roads. When the skyway closes because of say a snow storm, all I hear about the next day is how horrible the stretch of road is going down Tifft or Ridge rd. Granted he lives by the Lackawanna 6, it’s just amazing to hear how long it takes him to get home on a stormy day. Just seems like when the skyway closes, a major artery is cut off.
I can back up that claim. I live on RT 5 in Hamburg and work on Pearl st in the city. Takes 15 minutes when the skyway is open and 1 hour or more when the skyway is closed for weather.
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So after all that, Higgins says the skyway is totally coming down.
Also the solution to traffic problems is to sync up traffic lights on existing streets & cashless tolls.
would take advantage of the city’s radial street grid designed by Joseph Ellicott like spokes on a wheel in 1804. “You have all these streets coming into Niagara Square from the suburbs – Genesee, Sycamore, Broadway, Clinton, William, Seneca and South Park,” Higgins said. “All were built for a population of 300,000 more people than we have today. Why aren’t we taking advantage of that by reactivating those streets that have been commercially dead for 50 years? We can do that with this opportunity.”