In his letter, Cuomo also directed the department to install speed messaging boards to alert drivers of the change, which is effective immediately.
Brown called Saturday’s accident a “freak occurrence.”
“As we have checked, something like this has not happened in the past and we want to make sure that it doesn’t happen in the future,” he said.
Officials have not said that speed played a role in Saturday’s fatal crash and Leatherbarrow declined to comment Sunday on a possible cause. But Buffalo government and community leaders are continuing to talk about the need for additional radical changes to slow down the Scajaquada and improve public safety.
It has never happened before and we don’t know why it happened, yet here we are talking about “radical” changes.
The death of a child is terrible and there should be a guard rail along that stretch. But this is likely going to be used to further push for the removal of the 198 as we know it:
… the Department was asked by a number of individuals and organizations, including Assemblyman Sean Ryan, to re-examine a broader range of alternatives, including a two-lane alternative, and an alternative which completely removes the NY 198 within Delaware Park.
the elmwood/allen hipster/hippies are going to love this.
maybe the park will connect to hoyt lake and the cemetery like in the 1900s.
they can slackline from elmwood all the way to the zoo where they belong. loljk not srs
Super sad. Not sure about you guys but even at 50 my car doesn’t randomly shoot off the road. I guess their thought is that at a lower rate of speed when you are flying off the road you can stop easier?
They changed the speed limit to 30 along the ENTIRE length of the 198 as well. I completely understand lowering it from Parkside to Delaware (Especially with that hairy Delaware exit) but the rest of it is covered with guard rails and is no where near pedestrian traffic. Should be 30 to Elmwood then at least 45 after that.
Either way, it really is a terrible situation. Sucks that politicians will now use this as a catapult for actions that are for their own benefit.
Never understood why there wasn’t a guardrail between the 198 and all the people walking in the park. Thinking about how many times I’ve seen the light poles in that section knocked over from cars going off the 198 you’d think someone at the DOT would have seen this accident coming. Sad that it takes a dead kid for someone to realize you need some kind of barrier between expressway traffic and a park full of people.
I don’t think you’ll ever eliminate the 198 from the park but I think converting it to a parkway between Parkside and Elmwood exits makes sense. Only in WNY would a plan to bisect the city’s nicest park with an expressway ever happen in the first place.
I’m wondering where they are going to shoot radar from for speeders, there isn’t a safe shoulder on that thing to just have a cop sitting there. Maybe some sort of camera.
It’s an emotional reaction to the tragedy, not a rational one. Same thing happened a few years ago on the 290 with politicians calling to lower the speed limit.
It does not need to be safe, If a cop creates a situation where there is a crash or heavy congestion it will never be their fault because they are out to promote safety… in their blacked out charger with super hard to see police markings on it.
both routes negatively altered the original layout of the city…one cut a park in half, the other ripped out a parkway and created the dump hole known as the east side.
This situation is a fine example of why we need to “respond and NOT react”. I just used that phrase the other day when talking to someone. This is why they are called first responders not first reactors.