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The New York State Department of Transportation has narrowed down its choices for rebuilding aging Interstate 81 in Syracuse to two options. One option is a community grid as represented in the upper drawing. It reroutes through traffic around the city on Interstate 481 and sends vehicles with destinations in Syracuse onto city streets. A second option is to rebuild the elevated highway. It is represented in the lower drawing.

(New York State Department of Transportation)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - The state's options to replace Interstate 81's elevated highway in Syracuse are down to two: a more modern version of the raised highway or a community grid that funnels traffic onto city streets.

There's no tunnel in I-81's future.

Syracuse.com has learned what the New York State Department of Transportation will announce to the public at an event Thursday.

The DOT has dropped the tunnel option pushed by some government and business leaders to build a tunnel to carry the interstate under the city. At an estimated $3.1 billion to build, nearly twice as much as the other options, the department said a tunnel is too expensive and would take too long to build.

The state will present its two choices to the public at a meeting 3-8 p.m. Thursday in the lower level ballroom at the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center (Oncenter) 800 S. State St. Project Director Mark Frechette will give a brief project overview at 6 p.m.



The two options left are:



Replace the current viaduct with a wider version that would include changes at the Harrison-Adams Street and Interstate 690 interchanges.

Remove the elevated highway along the Almond Street corridor and disperse traffic onto the city street grid.

Narrowing the design focus for the new highway "is a significant step to move this project forward," said DOT Commissioner Matthew J. Driscoll. "Over the next few months, our focus will be on the continued refinement of these two alternatives."

The option to rebuild the elevated highway, called Viaduct Replacement Option No. 4 in earlier reports, would have five curves and impact fewer buildings than other viaduct options considered, the state said. About a dozen buildings could be razed for the highway's construction.

The highway's alignment would stay as it is now but it would be modernized. The road would become wider, with break down lanes, some curves would be straightened, the DOT said. Changes would be made to the Harrison/Adams Street and the Interstate 690 interchanges. The DOT estimates the viaduct cost at $1.7 billion.

The grid option under consideration was called Community Grid No. 2 in earlier reports. The current viaduct would be torn down from between Monroe Street and I-690 and replaced with a street -level urban arterial.

The DOT would reroute I-81 "through traffic" around the city on what is now Interstate 481. Traffic entering Syracuse from the south would come down the elevated highway with Dr. Martin Luther King being the first intersection, the DOT said. Traffic would be funneled to Almond Street and flow onto the street grid to reach destinations in the city.

Almond Street would be rebuilt with two lanes in either direction, said Gary Holmes, speaking for the DOT via email. The design would allow for bicycle and pedestrian use.

The new street would have landscaped medians, high visibility crosswalks and bump-outs at the corners to reduce the crossing distance for pedestrians, the DOT said. At $1.3 billion, this is the least expensive of the options considered.

During an August visit to Syracuse, Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the current viaduct running through the city a "classic planning blunder." The governor, however, didn't say which option he preferred.

We should know the DOT's final design choice soon. The department is creating a draft environmental impact statement identifying the preferred alternative, the commissioner said. The DEIS is expected to be made public in early 2017.

Two years ago, the state began looking at four main alternatives to replace the aging, crumbling elevated highway that carries I-81. It could do nothing, replace the viaduct, build a tunnel or route interstate through traffic around the city sending local traffic on city streets. Each of those alternatives had a set of suboptions.

Why did the DOT eliminate the other options?

The tunnel was recommended for elimination because of the high construction costs, the lengthy time to build it and the high long-term maintenance costs, the DOT said.

Two of the viaduct options also were eliminated because of the significant impact they would have on property in the city, including the need to buy historic buildings and the displacement of businesses to make way for the project.

The community grid alternative to turn Almond Street into a boulevard was eliminated because of the socioeconomic impacts, concerns about the lack of connectivity with some city streets and a less favorable traffic flow when compared with the other grid alternative, the DOT said.