With rehabilitation work getting underway on the Skyway, Rep. Brian Higgins is calling on the New York State Department of Transportation to ease delays on Route 5.
The project requires closing one or both lanes of the Skyway for several hours each day. Higgins says the DOT should provide alternative routes for the 40,000 people who use the bridge daily.
"South Park Avenue is a route that extends from Hamburg, New York, all the way to downtown Buffalo. Synchronized lighting, along South Park Avenue, would provide a real alternative to the Skyway not only during this period of reconstruction but also potentially permanently which could help us develop more creative alternatives to the Skyway," Higgins said at a news conference Monday morning.
Higgins says the DOT should synchronize signals on several routes.
"The secondary benefit of activating streets like South Park Avenue and Seneca Street is there is a commercial component to it as well and that would help the local businesses," he added.
A spokesperson for the DOT, Susan Surdej, says instead of synchronizing all of the signals on the entire length of a street, signals will be synchronized on the posted detours. Surdej says rehabilitating the Skyway's deck is expected to be complete by 2020 at a cost of $29 million.
