While advocates in Hunts Point continue to battle to get the Sheridan Expressway torn down, a Mott Haven-based community organization is warning that traffic will pile up on the Major Deegan Expressway if the 1.3–mile-long highway connecting the Cross Bronx and the Bruckner expressways is demolished.
The coalition that has been battling to tear down the Sheridan and replace it with housing and parks scoffed at state highway engineers’ predictions that without the Sheridan rush hour traffic on some Hunts Point streets would nearly double over the next 20 years. The Department of Transportation met with angry disbelief when it unveiled its traffic studies on July 13 at a meeting of some 60 residents, community advocates and business leaders gathered at Casita Maria on Simpson Street.
The meeting, the first with stakeholders in a year, showed that reaching a consensus on whether the state’s most controversial highway should be retained or demolished remains elusive.
The split between the proprietors of businesses in the Hunts Point food distribution center and the Southern Bronx Watershed Alliance, the collation seeking to tear down the highway, is as wide as ever.
And Mott Haven-based For a Better Bronx weighed-in with the charge that Hunts Point’s gain would be their community’s loss, if trucks that now use the Sheridan were rerouted onto the Deegan instead.
“We’re disappointed that land use and economic analysis is not going to be factored in,” said Veronica Vanterpool of the Watershed Alliance, which includes several South Bronx community groups, including Sustainable South Bronx, The Point CDC and Mothers on the Move.
But truckers and the businesses they serve in the market want to see the Sheridan remain. Demolishing the route so many delivery trucks take from the George Washington Bridge to the market would hurt and cost South Bronx residents jobs, they contend.
“I find the whole thing to be about a land use and park choice, not traffic,” said Matthew D’Arrigo, president of the Hunts Point Produce Market. He charged that the groups advocating removal of the Sheridan “don’t represent the neighborhoods; they represent themselves.”
Those who want the highway to remain found an ally in Jaime Rivera of For a Better Bronx. While the Watershed Alliance planners say trucks should reach the Hunts Point markets by turning south from the George Washington Bridge and taking the Major Deegan to the Bruckner, Rivera said increased traffic on the Deegan would make asthma problems worse for residents.
“We can’t support something that takes from one neighborhood to serve another,” he said. “The Sheridan is key.” Rivera added that his own father has worked as a trucker his entire life, including a stint at the Hunts Point market. He said, though, he would be supportive as long as truckers’ livelihoods are taken into consideration, “in a plan that’s not going to decrease their income.”
Hunts Point homeowner Jose Ortiz complained about the constant pollution from the traffic, and emphatically called for a park to be built where the highway now stands. Before the Sheridan was built in the early 1960s, “there was a park there and they took it off. The kids used to play there,” he said.
And those who want the Sheridan torn down said the DOT was exaggerating the impact of life without the highway.
“Looking at the modeling, we think they’ve overstated the numbers quite a bit,” said Kyle Wiswall, general counsel for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. “The model is not exactly representative of what would happen.”
New ramps planned for the Bruckner and a new intersection at Oak Point Avenue, would help traffic flow, he argued. Coupled with the fact that most traffic to the Hunts Point market happens in the wee hours of morning, the Deegan would not see significant traffic spikes during peak travel hours, he said.
The DOT officials insisted that the state was committed to gathering as much community input as possible before making a decision in 2012.
More workshops and public sessions are in store, the DOT brass assured people, via community board meetings.
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