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- [00:00]
A
Support for the Big Dig comes from New England Recovery center, providing inpatient addiction treatment in state of the art facilities located in Westborough, Mass. All major insurance plans accepted. Learn more@newenglandrecovery.org and also from Safety Insurance, offering auto insurance policies designed to help for when the worst happens. You can ask an independent agent about safety insurance. Safety Insurance will help you manage life's storms. As you may know, Dwight Eisenhower was a longtime champion of the Interstate program all the way back to the time of World War I, when as a young soldier, he was sent on a convoy trip across the entire American continent and he realized just how bad the country's roads were. So. So as president, decades later, in 1956, Eisenhower proudly signed the bill that launched the Interstate system by opening up the spigot of federal dollars that would build it. But there's a famous story about Eisenhower that takes place a few years after that. In 1959, Eisenhower is in his motorcade driving through Washington on his way out to Camp David when they get stuck in traffic. It's construction traffic, construction of a new highway in the middle of the nation's capital. Eisenhower, as the story goes, was shocked and also appalled. In his mind, highways were supposed to go between and around cities, linking them together like Germany had done with the autobahn. So why was an interstate cutting through the heart of the city itself? By that time, there was little that even the President of the United States could do to stop the build out of urban highways. But today, Eisenhower's original vision is getting a second look. My name is Ian Coss, and welcome to the Big Dig Highway Teardown Tour. So what are we looking at here today? Syracuse, New York. A city that is taking the radical step of trying to reclaim Eisenhower's vision to send the highway around the city.
- [02:27]
B
81 northbound, is the traffic moving close to US 81 southbound.
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A
The highway we're talking about is I 81, a major freight corridor that runs like a straight vertical line on the map right through the heart of the of downtown Syracuse, where it carries about 100,000 cars a day on a massive elevated viaduct. But that is about to change.
- [02:50]
B
So we're taking a viaduct down and we're basically bringing 81 to street grade level right here.
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A
This is where it comes down, right here. The key to all this, as I learned on my Hardhat tour, is that Syracuse, like a lot of cities, also also has a beltway, a road that loops around the city about five miles to the east called 481. And over the past 10 years, a group of activists and planners have pushed to do what can feel impossible in many places. Rewrite the interstate map so that the Beltway 481 will become 81. Literally, swap out the blue and white signs so that the interstate will go around the city just like Eisenhower would have wanted it. Once that change is made, the old 81, the downtown 81, can become what they call the community grid, Basically just another city street with traffic lights and crosswalks. At grade in engineering speak part of the fabric of Syracuse once again, street light. At least that's the vision.
- [04:03]
B
It's hard for me to envision, and I look at the plans every day, but, you know, this will all be gone, so.
- [04:11]
A
So I want to bring together some of the key leaders and advocates for this project and ask them how were they able to choose that other path, the path where the highway goes around the city, not through it. We recorded this conversation in partnership with WRVO and the Museum of Science and Technology in downtown Syracuse. Before we jump into the conversation, I want to take the temperature of the room because this is a generational historic project, something that you all will never see again in your lifetimes. As of this moment, if you're feeling more anxious than excited, let's hear some applause. And if you're feeling more excited than anxious, give us a round of applause. Okay, good to know where everyone stands, and maybe we'll check back in at the very end. So, joining us tonight, we have Joe Driscoll, the Interstate 81 city project director for the city of Syracuse. Come on out, Joe. We've got Marie Therese Dominguez, who is the commissioner for the New York State Department of Transportation. And we've got Lanessa Owens Chaplin, who is the director of the Racial justice center at the New York Civil Liberties Union. Give it up. So, Lanessa, I was hoping we could start with you. Before you were a lawyer.
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B
Yes.
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A
You lived as a young person in Pioneer Homes, which is right next to i81 in Syracuse. Just how close was your apartment to that highway?
- [06:09]
B
I want to put a few things in perspective. Right.
- [06:11]
A
Please.
- [06:12]
B
So, one, I grew up in a segregated neighborhood. My neighborhood was predominantly black. Yeah. That viaduct really stood as, like, a barrier, like a physical barrier to what was on the other side. I had no concept of how close I was to Syracuse University when I lived there. And so I think it's just important to note that really, when you live in that area, you really feel like you're secluded in that area. You really feel like you're landlocked. In the Pioneer Homes, there's one way in and there's one way out. But in terms of how close it was when I first moved into the Pioneer Homes, I went in as an 18 year old, healthy young adult. And it was my second apartment at the time. And it was, I moved in because it was affordable. I was working two jobs and going to community college. And I would say about a year in, I started to develop some what the doctor called exercise induced asthma. And I didn't know that was a thing. I never had asthma growing up as a kid, but I developed Asthma as an 18 year old child. And you know, my doctor never asked me, like, what neighborhood do you live in? How close are you to a highway? Those kind of conversations just weren't being had. And when I moved away from the Pioneer Homes two years later, my exercise induced asthma was gone. And so that was kind of the first indicator that it was something that had something to do with my environment and less about what my health was.
- [07:30]
A
Yeah. Commissioner Dominguez, you're looking across the whole state, right? You're looking at New York City, Albany, Syracuse, Utica, Rome, Rochester, Buffalo. Of all the cities, of all the highways that fall under that job, what is it about i81 in Syracuse that made you think that highway does not need to be there?
- [07:57]
C
Well, first and foremost, it's completely outlived its serviceable life. It is in desperate need of repair. We've been doing a lot of work on it to make sure that it's safe. Obviously people are using it right now. But what became very clear back in 2010, all of our highway designers and planners were looking at it, saying we have got to figure out a way forward. Either we're going to have to fix it as it is right now, i81 that cuts through the city of Syracuse, or we have to come up with some other options on how we're going to actually move people goods through and around the city of Syracuse. The question was is what would those other options look like? And that's when we started to study some alternatives.
- [08:40]
A
Yeah, Joe, I want to spend a little time on how we got here. Looking at the 2010s period when a lot of the discussion debate around this happens. Is debate putting it too soft.
- [08:58]
D
Yeah, probably.
- [09:00]
A
So when this idea started to really get serious of tearing down the viaduct, of looking for other options, what, what was the opposition to that? What did that look like coming from outside the city and within the city? Can you kind of take us back in time?
- [09:15]
D
Oh, man. I remember I'LL just maybe start with. I remember one of the. There was a group called Save 81 that was really well organized, well funded. And one of the ads, I forget it, I'll paraphrase, but it was something to the effect of, I guess Christmas is canceled this year because we can't get on 81, so, like, we're not gonna make it to grandma's house. You know, there was that level of kind of conversation going on. There was a. Of misinformation, a lot of diseases.
- [09:41]
A
And it was running on television, on the radio.
- [09:43]
D
No, more like social media. You know, a lot of Facebook posts. It was, it was, you know, this was in Facebook's kind of heyday, right then, like, you know, 2016, 17. A ton of, you know, just leave it alone. Was a lot of the marketing and, you know, community gridlock instead of the community grid was, you know, it was, it was just. To me, it seemed like a lot of misinformation, a lot of disinformation. I was on the city council at the time and we had a public forum on, you know, there's basically a few different options. A tunnel option, which was never really that viable because it would be less than like a mile long. So there's no tunnels that are less than a mile in length to widen and make the viaduct larger and wider and taller to meet federal standards or to bring it to grade. And so that was kind of the dynamic at the time was there were a lot of suburban interests just really fear mongering, saying this is going to destroy the economics of the city. It's going to be impossible to get around. It was really just everything you'd imagine to throw at it. And you know, lanessa was super active. I give NYCLU a ton of credit at that time for really bringing the truth and the facts of the debate to the surface.
- [10:56]
B
Yeah, I want to chime in because I want to take it back even a little bit further than that. So our organization, the New York Civil Liberties Union, we have a really long history with this highway. Our first office in the 1960s was built or opened because of the first construction. And so we, the regional chapter for the regional New York City Central New York of the New York Civil Liberties Union was opened because of the original build. And I think people often forget the original build. It was very apparent that this neighborhood was targeted. And they did a 24 hour protest in front of city hall where they slept overnight and said, please don't put this highway in our neighborhood. And they still did. And so as A result of all those protests and those 1300 families that were displaced, Our office was opened. And so when we heard that there was a real opportunity to kind of finally think through how this highways impacted community members, we jumped in as an organization. My first job with NYCLUE was i81 project manager. I was a full time i81 project manager, staff person. So I had the the Privilege to work 40 hours a week on a project that felt very passionate to me. Because not only am I a resident of Syracuse, born and raised on the south side, lived in the pioneer homes, I had a close connection to these folks. And one of the first questions that I asked residents before I did anything was like, well, what do you want to see? And the amount of pushback of the state's going to do whatever they want to do anyway. It doesn't really matter. My opinion doesn't matter. My grandmother has told me the stories of how they just rummaged through my neighborhood. That was a real barrier to get the community to come forward. Then secondly, we did have a ton of opposition. The conversation when we entered the room was about commute times and it was about how are we going to get from point A to point B. I think our organization, nycl, was like, wait a minute, there's a racial justice, civil rights issue here that we're completely ignoring. We tried our best to bring that to the forefront. We did that through Community Voices, where we had community residents do letters to the editor once a week to talk about their experience. Those who we are fortunate enough to find, those who are still alive, who lived through the first construction. So we had residents writing letters to the editor to talk about this. We worked with the Onondaga County Historical association and we scanned 500 documents and clippings from that period to say, here are all the things that we know that happened during that time. It was very clearly racially motivated as like Robert Moses said, like kill two birds with one stone. Like we can connect interstate commerce and we can get rid of the slums. That very much is on the record here in Syracuse from our city planners. And so we really tried to highlight that work and take power away from the town supervisors and some of their allies who were really just concerned with how much time is it going to increase for them to go to work. But also there was a ton of dog whistles like, we don't want to stop at a stop sign and have to drive to this neighborhood and get robbed. Right. We heard that kind of rhetoric coming from town supervisors, suburban communities, predominantly Whiter, wealthier neighborhoods who were really afraid that to grade meant they had to ride through a black neighborhood. So the, and the dangers of riding
- [14:03]
A
the viaduct represented a kind of safe margin, like elevated above.
- [14:09]
B
Right. Because now if you ride on the highway, and I know it's hard to visualize for people who have never seen the highway, but the highway is actually above the public housing.
- [14:17]
A
Right. So you look down at the building,
- [14:19]
B
you would have to know it was there to look for it. Right. And so if you're just a driver, you don't know to look down the viaduct, you don't know you're driving through public housing. But now what you're asking folks to do is drive through these black neighborhoods that have been disinvested and ignored for
- [14:34]
A
decades and actually see it.
- [14:35]
B
And actually see it and have to
- [14:36]
A
stop at a stoplight and idle and. And be there still when all statistics
- [14:42]
B
show that there's no, there's not a higher crime rate in this area than any other neighborhood in Syracuse. But this kind of. It's just that dog whistle of like, we don't really want to be integrated in the city of Syracuse. And so this idea that we need to stay separate was really, really prevalent during the very beginnings of that conversation.
- [15:00]
A
Yeah. Just to kind of close up the history portion, we have these three options on the table. Either we rebuild the viaduct bigger and better than ever. We do some kind of tunnel option, which Joe, as you said, was probably never going to happen, or this third thing that we're calling the community grid. That decision ultimately comes to your office, Commissioner. Was that a tough call?
- [15:31]
C
Well, we did a lot of community outreach to get there. And just for the record, there were like 17 options that were originally studied.
- [15:38]
A
Okay. Yeah.
- [15:39]
C
So it got narrowed down.
- [15:40]
A
Sure.
- [15:41]
C
But so many people were doubtful that we could do anything different. Are we going to repair in place? Are we going to do nothing? Or are we going to actually come forward with this visionary idea that the community was presenting and that we were pulling together of a community grid and then explaining what a grid is. How do you actually bring people into the city of Syracuse at grade? Low speed, no more high volume, high speed access through the middle of Syracuse. It was an opportunity of a lifetime. And we were getting so many comments from the community for support for the community grid that it became very apparent that that was the preferred alternative.
- [16:26]
A
Can you give me a sense of the volume of comments?
- [16:29]
B
Over 5,000.
- [16:30]
A
Okay.
- [16:30]
B
Nightclub submitted over 5,000 comments.
- [16:34]
A
Personally.
- [16:34]
B
Yeah. Our organization submitted over 5,000 comments.
- [16:37]
D
Yeah. And Community for the Grid had another 2,000, I think.
- [16:40]
A
Wow.
- [16:41]
C
We had thousands upon because we kept taking comments for every segment of the environmental process. I think we did over 575 public engagements.
- [16:55]
A
It's interesting to me how, you know, I've been doing these tapings in different cities around the country. And so often the thing that sparks ideas and a change in conversation is the fact that in order to rebuild the viaduct, you have to build it bigger. Because, you know, the original viaduct didn't have the breakdown lanes, you know, didn't have whatever, you know, the merging distance or whatever the federal standards standards we have now for a safe, functional interstate highway. It was not built that way back in, you know, decades ago. It just makes me wonder, you know, if we could just rebuild these assets exactly as they were, would it prompt these same kinds of, you know, outside the box conversations?
- [17:41]
D
It would have been a lot harder, I'll say that, at least from our perspective as the advocates. You know, I let the commissioner speak to how came from her side, but from our side as the advocates, we were like, wait, so you want it to be two years longer or three years longer of construction? You want it to cost 800 million more? You want it to knock down 20 more buildings or 30 more buildings then, you know, and sorry if I'm using, you know, broad strokes, I don't have them all memorized like I did back then. But basically, I think it would have been a lot harder argument to make if you could have said, yeah, we'll just put some rubber bands on, you know, some band aids on it and
- [18:12]
A
fresh coat of paint.
- [18:13]
D
Fresh coat of paint.
- [18:14]
B
I just don't know if the community would have went for that. I think that there was a strong, strong desire from community residents and allies to remove the viaduct. I think it was very clear from the beginning. So I think it would have been an uphill battle for sure, but we would have probably still kept our foot on dot's neck to say this thing has to go. And I think we would have been aligned with that. And deciding the best option isn't always about what's the cheapest option, right. Or what's the quickest option. So I think reconnecting the community was named as a goal in the project proposal. And we really hung our hat on that. Right? So you're like, what is the project goals? One is reconnecting the community. How do we get there?
- [18:54]
A
Right. Coming up, we get into the nitty gritty. What will happen after the viaduct comes down? What will replace it? Where will all the cars go. And what will all that mean for the people who live there?
- [19:38]
E
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- [20:54]
A
When I travel around the country and I talk with urban planners about how they would like to see the future of cities and highways, a lot of people will point to exactly what Syracuse is doing, saying, look, we have a beltway, we have a road, in this case 481 that goes around the city. That should be the highway. Highways should go between and around cities. They should not go through cities. And and so Syracuse really feels like a very powerful test case of like, as we discussed, we built the highway through the city. People have gotten used to that highway through the city. Can we go back? Can we undo that? Change people's behavior, change people's expectations of where highways are and where highways can get them. And so I want to get into some of the mechanics of that, how that will work.
- [21:52]
D
So the current path of 81 will come to grade and then we'll go back up. So it's about a 1.4 mile section that will go to grade. But if you're looking to just, you know, if you're going from further north to further south, there will be a way to, if you want to just stay high speed, you can take 481 and 81.
- [22:16]
A
And how big is that detour to go around the city? Roughly?
- [22:21]
D
It's about four minutes, five minutes, something like that.
- [22:24]
C
It's five minutes extra. But I would argue that it's five minutes that literally saves lives. It certainly Saves emissions in the middle of downtown Syracuse.
- [22:35]
B
And I also, for people who are listening, have no concept of like why we're talking about five and 10 minutes. Like if you live in a major city and you're saying like my traffic time's gonna increase by five or 10 minutes, it sounds kind of off the wall. Right. And so the fact that we had years long debates about five to 10 minutes of increased traffic, it just reminds me of like sometimes when you're starting to think through how you can distribute pollution equitably, it starts to feel like oppression to other people. Right. And so for decades this neighbor has carried the bulk of traffic pollution, truck traffic pollution, car pollution. And now we have this opportunity to reroute about 70% of the major diesel trucks, which are all air pollution is not created equal. And so these are the things that are actually poisoning the neighborhoods that are going to be rerouted to outside the city where it's safer. You're not in a residential neighborhood, you have a lot of trees, a lot of other plants that are kind of soaking up that air pollution before it gets to folks homes. So it's a much safer place for cars to drive for people. And just having that conversation around five to ten minutes felt so off the wall. For folks who live in the city of Syracuse, to continue to have that conversation even now in this conversation still feels off the wall. I mean, I've lived in New York City, I've lived in D.C. there are very high traffic in areas and 5 to 10 minutes is laughable in a lot of major cities. And I think the uproar from our towns and villages who live is also laughable.
- [24:03]
A
It's an interesting reminder of like when harm has been concentrated and wildly, unequally distributed for so long, that becomes the baseline. Right. That's we're all used to. And so then the idea of redistributing that harm, even partially, as you said, can feel like an assault on somebody else. Through those conversations, did you feel like you were able to get conveyed the harm that your neighborhood had been bearing for the rest of the region for all these decades?
- [24:45]
B
Yeah, I don't want to put a blanket. It's not a blanket. It wasn't all suburban neighborhoods.
- [24:51]
A
It's not like city versus suburbs.
- [24:53]
B
No, there wasn't. There was some great suburban partners. We had DeWitt for the burbs.
- [24:58]
D
We had a lot of suburban partners,
- [24:59]
B
suburban partners who understood the historical harm and the current harm. And as an organization, the nyclu, we went to every single town hall that Every town had during that time. And we did try to have an opportunity to speak to folks, but like I said, I think it was a much deeper conversation and they weren't really invested in. It was never really about the 10 minutes. It was more about the drive in the neighborhood and their fear of having to enter into the city of Syracuse.
- [25:30]
A
So let's, let's, let's talk about entering into the city of Syracuse. Let's talk about the grid itself, because I think I've seen renderings. I'm sure many folks here have seen renderings, but really, could somebody paint me a visual of you're on the highway, you're chugging along 60, 65, 70, I don't know how many miles an hour, and then suddenly you approach the city of Syracuse and it changes. What do you see? Commissioner, maybe you can lay that vision for us.
- [26:03]
C
So what you see, first of all, the way in which you come into will change. So you're going to be reducing speed. And the roadways are designed to slowly kind of move you. So you're not in a straight line. You're not going as fast as you possibly can. You know, our regional director, Betsy Parmalee, who's our project director for a long time, says it's a mind trick for a driver.
- [26:33]
E
Right.
- [26:33]
A
I'm really interested in this, how you sort of like, trick people into thinking you're not on a highway anymore.
- [26:38]
C
It's a little bit of a mind trick in terms of how we design the roadway. And you start to curve a little bit, but very subtle curves, not sharp curves, but subtle curves to start to slow you down. And eventually you come to.
- [26:52]
A
And these are deliberately added.
- [26:54]
C
Deliberately added.
- [26:55]
A
The road is just weaving slightly.
- [26:57]
C
Slightly.
- [26:58]
A
And the lanes are narrowing.
- [27:00]
C
The lanes are narrowing and you're getting closer. You're clearly in a city now, right? You've got medians in the middle of the road. You're slowing down. You're eventually going to hit a roundabout. The roundabout slows you down.
- [27:17]
A
That forces you to slow down.
- [27:19]
C
You also have to make some choices. Where are you going? Right? But the bottom line is that we've taken you in such a direction that you have options. But now your speed is between 25 and 30 miles an hour, and you're in the city and you've got pedestrian walkways, you've got grassed areas, you've got a shared use path, you've got lighting, you've got all of these indicators that will now be along the roadway and in the roadway, right?
- [27:49]
A
That say, this is a Place for people.
- [27:50]
C
Correct.
- [27:51]
A
Not just for cars.
- [27:51]
C
This is not just for cars. This is about pedestrians, bicyclists, people walking now across the street to access the other side of pioneer homes, which they could never really get to safely. So you gotta remember that on both sides of the street is a housing community. And literally, people who lived on one side of the housing community often didn't engage with people on the other side, even though there's playgrounds and other things there. Because it's just a difficult road to cross right now, and it'll be safer.
- [28:30]
B
Can I paint a quick picture, please, in contrast to what the commissioner is saying? Because right now it's dark, it's dreary, the highway. Parts of the highway literally cover about 20ft of the basketball court that's there.
- [28:45]
A
They're overhanging.
- [28:46]
B
It's overhanging the basketball court. So people are actually playing basketball at Wilson park underneath the viaduct. The paint is chipping. It leaks anytime it rains. It's just an ugly, ugly, ugly structure. I'm sorry, guys. You didn't build it. It's a really ugly structure, and it's really hard to get across. And there are parts of. Of people's homes. Their bedroom windows can literally reach out and throw a rock and hit the viaduct. That's how close it is.
- [29:14]
C
Yeah.
- [29:15]
B
And there's. And there's backyards under the viaduct. Right. That's just blocked by one chain fence. And so thinking about the. The beautification of the neighborhood, you're going to have a proper welcome sign to Syracuse. Right. So you get off the highway, it's going to say, welcome to Syracuse. Right. So it identifies who we are, it gives us identity, something that people can feel proud of instead of like they're stuck here.
- [29:36]
A
Yeah, yeah, something. So when I hear phrases like it's going to be a boulevard, it's going to be at grade, something I wonder about. And this partly comes from studying the, you know, the story of the Big Dig, which, you know, for folks who've been to Boston in the last 20 years, you know, the elevated viaduct is gone. You know, that structure that looked. Looked a lot like what you've got here is gone. But I will say, as somebody who walks and bikes around downtown Boston a lot, it sometimes kind of feels like there's just a highway on the surface. The cars still move pretty fast. It's actually not that great for biking. When I talked to the folks who were involved in planning the surface of what is now downtown Boston, a lot of people who were involved recognized that there were missed opportunities. And so the question I have, and Joe, I'd be curious for you, coming specifically from the city standpoint, you're focused on the residents within the city of Syracuse. Is this going to be just a highway at grade or is this a city street?
- [30:48]
D
Well, my wife can testify that's what wakes me up at 3am most nights.
- [30:53]
A
Because if it's all those same cars but now at grade instead of overhead,
- [30:59]
B
well, a lot of the cars are going to be rerouted.
- [31:00]
A
Right.
- [31:01]
B
So a lot of the truck traffic will be out of that neighborhood.
- [31:04]
D
I said that jokingly, but I think, you know, you are always going to have that push and pull. I think there is, there is, you know, there's a need to move traffic. But the fact that we are talking and we're listening and the city planners and myself and all these folks are sitting with the NYSDOT folks, making sure that it will be a boulevard that can move both vehicles and people. I feel very hopeful that we'll be able to get it right.
- [31:28]
A
Yeah. Have there been, I don't mean to dwell on conflict, but have there been points of friction between the state and the city? Because the state is obviously. Commissioner, you have to think about the functioning of the whole regional transportation system. Joe, you're thinking about the residents who walk and bike and drive around that area. So like when you get down into the nitty gritty of like the width of the lanes, the width of the shoulder, the turn radius.
- [32:02]
D
Yes, I would say there have been conflicts and we haven't gotten every single thing we've asked for.
- [32:07]
A
So what were you looking for originally? That was a struggle.
- [32:10]
D
You know, I think a good example is they had started with 12 foot lanes and we wanted 10 foot lanes. And not to be cliche, but we've ended up with 11 foot lanes. You know, I don't know if that's,
- [32:24]
A
you know, if that's, that's democracy.
- [32:27]
D
Corny, but it's democracy. It's a great, like we still wanted 10 foot lanes, but this is, this is what we got.
- [32:32]
A
And I mean just to put a, I mean flag this for everybody here. I mean, I think these things sound kind of arcane and technocratic, but like as you know, Commissioner Dominguez, you were saying there is a psychological element to this of like whether you feel like I'm driving on a highway or I feel like I'm driving on a street. And these are the signals. Right. So truly the difference between 10 or 11 or 12 foot lanes is actually matters with how we relate with that roadway as drivers and pedestrians.
- [33:02]
D
Yeah. And I'd say we engaged a consultant who really wanted one lane in each direction for the boulevard. They want. You know, they wanted. And they, you know, wanted the city to do that. And NYSDAT was just very clear from the beginning. They were like, look, we still got a lot of vehicles to move, and this is not going to happen. And so, you know, there was the things that we asked for that we didn't get. But I think overall, I think that 12 foot, 10 foot, 11 foot is basically how it's gone a lot of the way.
- [33:31]
A
That's emblematic of it.
- [33:32]
D
I think all the hills that we were willing that we told them that, like, hey, we're willing to die on this hill. Like, this is really, really important to us. We haven't had any of those that we've been brushed off.
- [33:43]
A
So I came into Syracuse this morning by train, and I took an Uber from the train station to downtown. And I was just talking with my driver as we were down 81, somebody who drives for a living, and I was asking him about the project, and this guy who grew up in Syracuse, lived here his whole life, and he said, it's been this way, way too long to change now. And I'm curious how you think about that. Sort of like that next hill that you all have to climb of actually building the thing is one thing, but then actually changing the hearts and minds, the behaviors, the habits that go along with it. And how will you know if you've succeeded at that?
- [34:35]
C
I'll say one, I'll give you a couple anecdotes really quickly. Going to some of the public meetings. I had a gentleman come up to me, and he said, it's really great that you've got all these ideas out here. Way to go. This is never, ever gonna happen. Never, ever gonna happen. And you can take that in a lot of different ways. One, the doubting Thomas, or people's fear of change, whatever that is. Right. There's a lack of believability, trust, whatever that is. And I'll tell you another anecdote from one of our lead designers. I said. I asked him, like, when did you feel like you've been at this for, you know, almost 20 years now? When did you actually feel like you turned a corner? And he said, a guy came up to me in a community meeting, and he said, look, I live in pioneer homes. People are telling me a whole bunch of stuff. But I know that you're going to tell me the truth is what is the truth? And that he wanted to know what was the impact going to be on his. Where he lived and for him. Because the gentleman who works for New York State. That was like the culmination of his whole career. Because the trust,
- [36:08]
B
I want to add, as an organization, when we got involved in this, and I don't know what year 2017, we started having weekly meetings in the Footprint. And we had weekly meetings every Tuesday at 2, every Saturday at noon, and we canvassed twice a week as well. And we talked to hundreds of people. Like I mentioned, we had submitted 5,000 comments by the end of those two year stretch. And there was a few things that were going on that we heard consistently. We went in with this civil rights, racial justice lens and what we kept hearing over and over again was the highway's always been there, they're never going to tear it down, and we're afraid of construction. We don't want to live in a construction zone for five years. We don't want to live in a construction zone for 10 years. My health can't handle it. We really were able to kind of pivot folks to say maybe there's a possibility that can come down. And I think you'll always hear naysayers even 100 years from now saying it's still not going to come down and it's already gone. Right. So I think you're always going to have those people who are really different to change. But I don't know anyone that would volunteer to live under a viaduct.
- [37:18]
A
Right. I think what you're saying you're getting at one of the real core challenges of any generational investment like this is that the costs and the benefits play out on very different timescales. So, you know, the benefit of improving the air quality and the public health, that is something that plays out over a long time period. You know, having to spend five more minutes or seven more minutes in your car to get to the, you know, whatever it is downtown.
- [37:53]
B
The Wiggly Piggly.
- [37:55]
A
Thank you.
- [37:56]
D
Okay.
- [37:56]
B
I just made that up.
- [37:59]
A
I thought this was some Syracuse institution I've never heard of. Okay. I won't even attempt to make a local reference because I will step in it.
- [38:06]
B
Wegmans. Always say the Wegmans. Perfect.
- [38:08]
C
Thank you.
- [38:09]
A
That is something. Now you're speaking my language. We can all understand that. So, you know, to ask somebody to spend the extra 5, 10 minutes to get to Wegmans, that is an immediate thing you feel. Now the transformation in public health, the transformation in what that whole area could be if it is truly a walkable, bikeable, navigable, crossable area. These things, you know, take years and years or decades to be realized.
- [38:35]
B
I also want to address that too, and I'm glad you said that, because we were able to take all of the construction concerns and we had created like this large wish list about 17 things we wanted the New York State DOT to do to kind of bolster up their environmental protections. We were asking them to go way above and beyond what the federal and state require. And I think we had a good case for it. Right. We presented our best case. We had all those people that presented these comments to say we're really asking for additional protections here because one, these folks have endured the impact, right? And secondly, they're 3, 5, 10ft away from this viaduct and they have all these other health concerns. And so some of the things that we asked for, they were truly like a wish list. We wanted a health needs assessment. We wanted to understand the health of the footprint. We wanted folks to be able to call a hotline and say, like, I feel like I'm having impacts because of construction. Maybe I'm wheezing a little bit more, like I want to be seen or I want to at least be triaged over the phone. People are also asking for like energy efficient appliances. Right. Well, we're going to have to close our windows and we're going to need more air. So we really went with this really long laundry list to the, to the
- [39:38]
A
DOT thinking, no way.
- [39:39]
B
There's no way they're going to do these things. Maybe some, maybe we can try to like bully them to get some of these things done. But I have to give credit to the, at the time, the i81 director, Betsy Pomerle, who said, well, let's sit down and have a conversation and think how we can get this done.
- [39:53]
C
So this assessment, this health assessment will be a baseline. You're not going to see the immediate results because it'll take generations to kind of make sure that we're monitoring and moving forward. But now it's institutionalized. That's a great thing.
- [40:10]
B
I don't think the New York Civil Liberties Union, we don't often write amicus briefs for state agencies. This is not something that we do. We're typically on the other side of things, but we felt very strongly that one, when the final EIS was
- [40:26]
C
challenged,
- [40:27]
B
challenged when it was first issued, we knew that it would be challenged by the, this, by the Save I 81 people. They were a well funded, well organized organization that were against the community grid. So we decided to join the litigation as amikis. Right. So a friend of the court, a friend of the project. And I think we felt very strongly about our involvement in that litigation because of the kind of groundwork that we had laid over the years and the confidence that we had in the final proposal of the plan and all the additional protections that we saw. And we just. It was so clear in the feis that the community's voice was in there that we really wanted to kind of step up and support. Support the New York State. During the litigation phase of the project that I think delayed it by almost two years.
- [41:10]
A
Yeah.
- [41:12]
C
But I really appreciate that and thank you for saying that. Lanessa, she's downplaying the importance of the aclu. Nyclu. Nowhere in the country. Nowhere in the country have they ever, ever to file an amicus brief for a state dot.
- [41:35]
A
For a state dot.
- [41:36]
B
Yeah, I sat in frequent.
- [41:37]
C
I said in freedom, when I say the level of trust and things that like that have come together, here it is. It's a very, you know, it's a long time in coming. It's not something that happens overnight. And so, look, it's not done. We're just smack in the middle of construction right now. But the bottom line is like the federal, the U.S. department. I don't know if I ever told you, you this. U.S. department of Transportation came to me and they said, we've never seen anything like this before.
- [42:03]
D
Yeah.
- [42:04]
A
Wow. When the interstates were built in the 50s and the 60s, the thinking was, the experts know best, the engineers, the planners know best, trust us. Obviously, we've come to rethink that expertise. It seems to me that part of the implicit promise of this project is that the state is going to do better, that the state has learned its mistakes from the past. And I'm wondering if there are people or stories that you carry with you for any of you as reminders of that to keep with you as this project moves forward.
- [42:47]
C
Look, I think, you know, everything is an evolution, and if you don't learn from the mistakes of the past, you just repeat them. This project has been talked about since. I've heard people talk about it since 2000. Right. Van Robinson talked about it starting in 2001. So over two decades, perhaps longer, people have been talking about undoing the viaduct in one form or fashion. And so when we had. I'll tell you just really quickly, I had the opportunity when I first started on the project to meet with Van and his lovely wife. He was a civil rights leader here Head of the NAACP for a long time here in the city of Syracuse. And he was introduced to me as a civil rights leader. But he was also a former elected official. And by the time I met him, he was well into his later years. I said, tell me about 81, because I know that you've been an advocate for years to bring down the viaduct. And he told me his story and how he had worked so many years to look at alternatives to actually take down the viaduct and what it meant because he represented the community. And unfortunately, he passed away recently. And when he passed away, I had the chance to meet with his wife, who's also a force of nature. She said, I want to be there. I want to be there with you and with the community to knock down the viaduct. And the governor said at his funeral, I want to rename Almond street in honor of Van Robinson. And to me, that's kind of full circle. If we're able to get to that point, that'll be full circle.
- [44:48]
D
And his wife Linda, means literally with the sledgehammer just means she wants to be there when the crane's taken down. She wants the sledgehammer, she wants to be the one to hit the viaduct. And yeah, just what a tremendous impact Van Robinson had. He would always do that, Mr. Gorbachev, tear that viaduct down. You know, he really, he was always cracking Berlin Wall jokes about how the viaduct was our own little Berlin Wall. And it just, you know, he said from the first time he. He saw it and just said, that needs to come down. And he stayed fast to that his whole life.
- [45:28]
A
Just to close on a forward looking note. Lanessa, if you put yourself back in that apartment in pioneer homes and you look out your window 10 years from now, 15 years from now, what do you see?
- [45:45]
B
Hopefully I see a lot of people that look like me in that neighborhood. Because we had this really robust conversation about the collaboration between NYSDA and the community folks and the NYCLU and others. But there's a piece of this that's unfinished that does require cooperation with the city of Syracuse. And that's. What are we gonna do with the land that becomes available after the viaduct comes down? That's the thing that keeps me up at night, right? Cause we think about the 1300 families that were displaced during the 1950s and 60s. It was a straight ravished, right? They were just. That community was raised and overnight those folks were gone. So something that we've been heavily, heavily advocating for and pushing for through the city of Syracuse and through the New York State dot is like whatever land that becomes available that is actually developable is required to be used for affordable housing by the City of Syracuse. So folks who live there that have bear the burden of this highway can enjoy their neighborhood. So I would see kids playing outside, people enjoying public benches and public parks. A place to get ice cream, a place to sip some tea. That's what I would see in that neighborhood. But most importantly, people who look like me.
- [46:55]
A
All right, thank you so much to our panelists, Lanessa Owens Chaplin, Marie Therese Dominguez, Joe Driscoll. Thank you all for coming out tonight. According to Commissioner Dominguez, the i81 Viaduct will carry its final cars in 2027. Next up on the Highway Teardown Tour, we travel about 100 miles west to Rochester, New York to look at that very question lanessa ended on. What happens to the land once the highway is gone and who will benefit from it? A big thank you to Betsy Parmley at the New York State dot, who gave me that hard hat tour you heard at the top of the episode. Thanks again to our partners at WRVO and the Syracuse Museum of Science and Technology, specifically Bill Drake for everything he did to pull this thing together. Special support for this episode also came from the Neil Pierce Foundation. If you want to see some videos and photos that I took from my time on the tour, you can follow me. On social media, I'm on Instagram, iancoss and on most of the platforms, some version of iancoss. There's not a whole lot of us, which makes it simple. This was a fun one. I got a hard hat tour of the i81 project with Commissioner Dominguez and some of her staff, so I was able to take some pictures from that. The Highway Teardown Tour is produced by Fiona Boyd and myself, Ian Coss, with support from Isabel Hibbard. Our editor is Lacey Roberts. The Executive producer is Devin Maverick Robbins. The artwork is by Bill Miller. The Big Dig is a production of GBH News and distributed by prx. I really hope you're enjoying the show and before I let you go, I just want to drop in with that constant podcaster's reminder to please rate the show. Leave us a review, subscribe, and of course tell a friend. All that stuff really, really does help us keep the show going. Thank you so much
- [49:42]
C
from prx.