27 December 2004
Bruce Jackson
It's a happy New Year at Peace Bridge Plaza
When Senator Charles Schumer had a press conference a week ago announcing the agreement between the US and Canada on shared border management—which means all the toll booths and inspection facilities will soon move to the Canadian side of the Niagara River—it was the first time all parties to the decade-old Peace Bridge War were in total agreement and were all represented.Some people complain about how long the project is taking, but that is more a matter of perception than fact. The design process didn’t start in the early 1990s when the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority and their engineering consultants began trying to duplicate the 1927 steel bridge and to make an end-run around New York State environmental law. The process began when Board chairman Victor Martucci scrapped all of that in mid-November 2000 and said the process would start from scratch, it would involved the public, it would be open, and it would be legal. (See "Bridge Authority Has a Movement, PBC#46")
This it not only a major public works project but it involves two countries. There is a town and province on one side of the Niagara River, a city and state on the other, and they don’t have the same interests or needs or laws. Large forces outside the area have from the beginning been applying huge pressure on everyone to get anything built under any circumstances whatsoever and without regard to environmental impact, just so long more trucks were moving as soon as possible. The Buffalo-Niagara Partnership has consistently championed that view and for a long time the only daily newspaper in the region, the Buffalo News, capitulated to it.
A lot of things had to be figured out along the way, not the least being how to involve the public, which the law required but which the PBA had never done before (and neither had most of the other public authorities in New York State). There were false starts, but a lot was learned during them, and most of the work was done on the environmental impact study which will lead to the record of decision, the official document from the Federal Highway Administration permitting construction to begin.
FHWA had excluded shared border management from the design possibilities because it thought the US and Canada couldn’t reach agreement on that policy in time to be of use to the Peace Bridge expansion project. They hadn’t figured on Chuck Schumer sinking his teeth into this one and playing bulldog. He wouldn’t let it go, he nagged, cajoled, and sweet-talked the agencies. He brought the key American and Canadian players to Washington and sat them around as table and said, “Why can’t this be done?” To each objection from either side he turned to the other and said, “Is that true? Is that right?” Each time, the answer was, “No” or “Not exactly.” The meeting ended with the groundwork in place for the plan announced last week.
The decision to shift all inspection and toll-collecting operations to the Canadian side has enormous implications for Buffalo. Instead of taking property by eminent domain, the Public Bridge Authority will be returning parkland to the city, and it will be possible to develop an international gateway and rehabilitate Niagara Street. The Authority’s decision to scrap its lumbering series of public hearings and go to an open design competition means there may be a final design on the table within a year.
Add to that the huge Bass Pro sports store going into the long-abandoned downtown arena and the decision by BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York to put its new headquarters with 1200 employees in the long-vacant Buffalo Gas Light Co. Site across the street from city hall, plus the fact that the Bills have won six straight and may actually make it to the playoffs, and you’ve got a pretty good New Year’s package for the city of Buffalo.
Copyright 2004 by Buffalo Report, Inc.