Members of the Albany Riverfront Collaborative traveled to Atlanta this week to brainstorm with groups from other U.S. cities as part of their quest to re-imagine Interstate 787.
Beth Osborne, Vice President of Transportation and Thriving Communities at Smart Growth America, says the Atlanta conference will help turn talk of "re-imagining" the highway to reconnect residents with the Hudson River into action. “So many cities across the country over the last 20 or 30 years have sought to utilize their waterfront to build their communities, economic development, to create exciting gathering places," Osborne said. "And what has stood in the way in Albany and in many other areas is highways and railroads. And so seeing their ambition, their holistic approach that wasn't just about the removal of the highway, but about building communities, re-establishing the local roadway grid, bringing in green space and in public space. That was what was so exciting about their approach. It isn't just about the transportation infrastructure. It was the sole focus on moving vehicles on the highway that got the region into the problem, but the solution needs to be about the whole community.”
With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Smart Growth America, Equitable Cities, the New Urban Mobility Alliance, and America Walks created the Community Connectors program. The goal is to help advance locally driven projects aimed at reconnecting communities separated or harmed by transportation infrastructure and tap available federal and state funds to support them.
Arbor Hill Development Corporation Executive Director Arlene Way says 15 teams from small to mid-sized cities including Albany were selected to receive a $130,000 capacity-building grant to advance these projects.
"We're here with people from Tennessee, from other parts of the country from Missouri. Just you know, and we all are wanting the same thing. We wanted to have a fair and equitable living environment where all people are respected. And where quality of life exists for everyone," said Way.
Way notes 787 divides the city, and its removal will herald opportunity. Executive director of Clean + Healthy Bobbi Wilding agrees.
"I don't believe that there's enough traffic to warrant the kind of divided highway that we have," Wilding said. "There's plenty of evidence that moving to something like a boulevard, that would bring the scale back down to a much more human scale, would fit in with other existing green infrastructure that runs along the area, and really provide a lot more acreage that could be new things can be done with. And so I'm really excited to move forward with that project. But I also think it offers the opportunity, sort of, once in a generation, to really rethink how we use the waterfront, not just for car transportation, or rail, but also for human activity. And how do we make sure that the communities that were divided when this very large infrastructure of 787 and the arterial were put in, are the ones who benefit first and their needs are the ones that are centered in solutions."
Democratic State Assemblymember Pat Fahy of the 109th district has been leading the drive to reimagine the highway. She says the idea is NOT to eliminate 787, which had more than 80,000 vehicles using it every single day in 2018.
"There's a lot of creative approaches and pieces that we can either take down or convert as was done on the Skyway just a couple of blocks from here. So there's conversion, there's takedown, and again, you can go over it with green parks as it's being in Buffalo. They are going over the Kensington highway with a mile plus green park, all green space. So there's, there's multiple ways to do it. Canals go under land parks, green parks go over, but you can also take down pieces and I think the more outreach the better," Fahy said.
Albany Common Council President Corey Ellis says efforts are under way to ensure average residents can be part of the decision-making.
"What piqued my interest was how our Department of Transportation, what they do, and how do we begin the process of allowing, letting them know that when we're doing such big projects, that we really have to show them how these projects are just not about traffic, but it's about what happens when projects of this scale happens, whether they go up and whether they come down," Ellis said. "It really gets into look at the community impact it has, and not just about cars being able to travel back and forth into a city or faster out of the city, but really taking in consideration how does that impact the city in the communities that are around it?"
The move to "Reimagine 787" stepped up with this year's "Planning and Environmental Linkage study," which expanded on the "I-787 Hudson Waterfront Study" completed in 2018 by the Capital District Transportation Committee. That study recommended changes including converting 787 to a more traditional roadway.
