Dismantling part of a highway named for Robert Moses

Niagara Falls, New York, is finally making progress on redoing the Robert Moses State Parkway, an 18-mile expressway that’s been controversial in some circles since its construction almost 50 years ago.

US Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) announced that the state Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation will submit a plan this month calling for removing part of the highway south of the city’s downtown and restoring the underlying Olmsted-designed park. “This proposed project will remove a flyover and replace it with a two-lane at-grade park road,” says Mayor Paul Dyster. “There’s some money for that project.”

Since the 1970s, parts of the expressway have been modified to make the area more accommodating to people on foot or on bicycle and to reduce obstacles between downtown and the majestic waterfall. In 2001, a four-lane section several miles long near the Niagara Gorge was changed—limiting motor vehicles to two lanes and allocating the other two lanes to use by hikers and cyclists.

The mayor says a state-led scoping process aimed at devising a plan for changes to the section running north from the city to the Village of Lewiston is under way. The process will narrow the options and lay out a few of them in detail, in hopes that consensus can be reached.

City Council has passed a resolution asking for removal of a section at least three miles long within the city itself.

In the late 1970s, a short section of expressway almost on the brink of the falls was entirely removed and replaced with naturalized landscapes and a new park visitor center.

While expressway modifications will likely be phased in over the next five to ten years, “A bunch of development is happening now,” says Dyster, who was active in the environmental and historic preservation movements prior to first winning the mayoralty in 2007.

Changes to the expressway—identified as the “big move” in the City’s master plan—would supercharge the city’s economic revival, local officials assert. Dyster points to a newly announced $23 million mixed-use hotel project, a nearly complete $26 million culinary college, and a $44 million intermodal Amtrak station as signs that a revival has begun. Construction was recently started on the station, which will serve connections between Buffalo and Toronto.

The first sections of the limited-access highway, originally called Niagara Parkway, opened in 1962. Later the name of Robert Moses, who held a variety of public works positions under state and other jurisdictions, most notably in the New York City area, was attached to the route. 

The Niagara Heritage Partnership has been advocating changes to the highway for years. The goal is preservation and restoration of the natural environment, along with “socially responsible development,” the partnership says on its website, niagaraheritage.org. Dozens of organizations, ranging from the Seneca Nation of Indians to the Main Street Business & Professional Association, have endorsed the Partnership’s parkway removal proposal.