The Christian Menn design for a new Peace Bridge was shot down by the federal government for a very good reason. Let’s just be happy with the three-arch single span design currently planned. Perhaps, instead, Christian Menn’s design could replace the Skyway over the Buffalo River and Union Ship Canal or become a new signature bridge in Rochester to carry the Inner Loop over the Genesee River or replace the current bridge in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, over Interstate 180 and the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.

In order to minimize the destruction of homes in the Columbus Park neighborhood and maximize restoration of Front Park, this crossing should be made for only non-commercial vehicles. Also, Interstate 190 should be done away with between Interstate 290 and Michigan Avenue in the Cobblestone District to make way for a re-watered Erie Canal between a fully re-watered entire Commercial Slip (as well as a portion of the former Hamburg Canal) and the Tonawandas, with traffic redirected onto downtown streets and Niagara Street and River Road. Front Park should also be connected along Porter Avenue by a walkway and greenway to the adjacent LaSalle, Columbus, and Prospect parks, with the blocks separating Front, Columbus, and Prospect also turned into parkland.

Also, the portion of the Kensington-King Expressway from Elm Street to the interchange with the Scajacquada, as well as the entirety of the latter, should become a new Olmstead-style parkway, redirected west of the Grant Street Tops store to another new signature bridge, for both cars and trucks, along the railroad bridge to connect to the QEW. Furthermore, the western end of Sheridan Drive (Route 324) should also be connected to the QEW in Canada by either a third signature bridge or a tunnel.

Finally, speaking of the Skyway and parkways, instead of converting Fuhrmann Boulevard to a parkway and retaining the current elevated superhighway, rightly described as “lipstick on a pig,” both should be done away with, replaced by a parkway similar to the Robert Moses Parkway that runs between the North Grand Island Bridge and Youngstown, between Woodlawn and the south end of the Skyway.

Kevin F. Yost

Henrietta