SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC NEWS) — An Interstate 81 advocacy group released a study on March 21 which they said proves the community grid proposal is a bad idea.
Several members of Save 81 crammed into the narrow Miss Syracuse Diner for the afternoon’s press event. A towering stack of papers dominated the attention of everyone present. All 11,609 pages of the Interstate 81 Draft Environmental Impact Statement, or DEIS, were placed next to a coffee maker.
The DEIS, although commissioned by the New York State Department of Transportation in 2016, was never released to the public. Save 81 obtained a copy from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in June 2017. Greg Lancette, the event’s organizer and charter member of Save 81, explained the delay in its release by admitting that they didn’t read it.
“None of us are transportation experts,” he said. “So we actually went out and found a transportation engineering firm with one of the most credentialed engineers in the state. So we had them start diving in to do comparatives and give an opinion.”
The DEIS found that the community grid proposal, which would replace the existing I-81 viaduct with surface streets, would also create severe delays at 90 intersections throughout Syracuse. Cars could idle at some intersections for as long as nine minutes, according to the information provided by Save 81.
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A mannequin looks on as the entrance to the Miss Syracuse Diner is dominated by an LED sign placed on the back of a truck. The diner's owner, Joseph Todisco, is against the community grid.
© 2019 Sam Gelfand
While Lancette was focused on the proposal’s impact on traffic, Joseph Todisco was focused on its impact on the economy. Todisco, who owns the Miss Syracuse Diner, volunteered to host the event. He’s afraid that a community grid would divert traffic and drive customers away.
“They say they Google ‘downtown diner’ and they come here,” he said. “A tunnel would still get me business, but a community grid would not, because through traffic is going to be diverted onto Route 481 North or South. At that point, if they’re Googling a diner, they’ll be in Jamesville or Fayetteville or DeWitt.”
Those lost customers would stack up over time, Todisco said, and hurt his business.
“I’m probably looking at, I would say two to three hundred dollars a week. That’s fifteen grand a year; that’s a lot of cash.”
The Department of Transportation is working on another DEIS that would analyze the proposed tunnel replacement as well. Save 81 is offering copies of the 2016 report on their website. Lancette said he hopes this evidence will help close a growing rift in the Syracuse public.
“It’s becoming more and more apparent that the community is becoming more and more divided over it,” he said. “I think if everybody had the opportunity to go dive in and go find some numbers and all of that, we could try to come up with something that’s reasonable for the community. Instead, somebody has to lose and somebody has to win.”
