New York state's choice to replace the mile-long Interstate 81 viaduct through downtown Syracuse - a decision 10 years in the making - is still a good six months away. The latest delay was to study a tunnel option, in addition to proposals for a new elevated highway and a "community grid" of improved city streets.

We don't need more time or study to see the path forward.

The right solution for Syracuse and Central New York is also the simplest solution on the table: the community grid.

Today, the Editorial Board puts a stake in the ground. We seek to coalesce public opinion around the most sensible option to replace I-81 -- now, while it's still possible to drive the debate and influence the outcome. We urge other community leaders, institutions and residents to speak out on behalf of the community grid.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, state transportation planners and many of our local elected officials have been waiting for a consensus to emerge on a solution for I-81. That is magical thinking on a project this complex, expensive, regionally significant and burdened by its own history. No choice will please everyone.

When all the pluses and minuses are counted, we believe the community grid will be a net win for Central New York. A strong, vibrant Syracuse is the region's beating heart. Its economic vitality does not depend on an interstate highway running through its core. It does depend on keeping and attracting residents, creating opportunities for economic growth and looking to the future.

The community grid - shorthand for an improved network of city streets to carry traffic to and from the city center - has the most potential for encouraging smart, inclusive growth. It would connect our surging downtown to the economic engines of Syracuse University and the medical complex. It also would be the least costly option, and the least disruptive.

Just as important, the community grid's promise - to knit together parts of Syracuse separated by the viaduct for more than 50 years - would begin to right the historic wrong of ramming the interstate through downtown.

In hindsight, we can see how that decision tore the fabric of the city, accelerated the decline of the neighborhoods next door to it and concentrated poverty in the highway's shadow.

Now, foresight is required to imagine the Syracuse we wish to leave to our children's children.

That Syracuse is connected to the economic and intellectual engines of growth on University Hill. It seeks to create opportunities and improve conditions for its poorest residents. It welcomes visitors but prioritizes the people who live here. It prizes people, neighborhoods and communities over cars.

The I-81 project offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to remake Syracuse. We must not squander it.

How we got here

In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act. It committed the federal government to paying 90 percent of the cost of building the nation's interstate highway system and created the Highway Trust Fund to finance construction.

Free from money constraints, state highway engineers sited an elevated highway through downtown Syracuse, with minimal local input. At the same time, city leaders were looking to eradicate "blight" on the city's East Side, primarily occupied by African-Americans. Thus, the 15th Ward was razed and I-81 rose in its place.

Fifty years after it was built, the 1.4-mile elevated section of I-81 is nearing the end of its useful life. It must come down. But what will replace it? The options have been whittled down to a new viaduct, a tunnel and the community grid.

This time around, with environmental reviews and public input now baked in, the I-81 planning process has been more open, inclusive and deliberative. Cuomo and the New York State Department of Transportation have bent over backward to defer to local political leaders. Our federal and state lawmakers insisted the tunnel option be brought back from the dead in 2017, delaying a decision for yet another year.

As discussion and studies drag on, the worst-case scenario comes into view: endless repairs and patching of the old viaduct -- and a huge opportunity missed.

The case against a tunnel, viaduct

Both the tunnel and viaduct would keep traffic whizzing through Syracuse at highway speed. Members of the group Save81 argue - with more fear than facts - that maintaining a high-speed connection is critical to moving people and goods.

Their real concern is that residents of the suburbs will have longer commutes to and from downtown. We've gotten used to our "20-minute city." DOT studies show that it might become 22 minutes in a community grid scenario.

Interstate 81 may have been built as part of a national interstate network, but it carries mostly local traffic. We have a great advantage in that a high-speed loop around downtown, Interstate 481, already exists. With improvements, it can handle the 12 percent of traffic that is just passing through.

We acknowledge the fears of communities to the west of Syracuse that their roads will be overburdened by trucks avoiding tolls and slightly longer interstate travel times. This is a longstanding regional problem that demands a regional or state-level solution.

Destiny USA will be fine. It's a well-established retail and entertainment hotspot, attracting visitors from all over, and especially Canada. Traffic from points north will be uninterrupted. The hotels in the northern suburbs also will survive; their competitors, bullish on the future, are building more.

A new viaduct would cost $1.7 billion and take four to six years to build. It would have to be wider, to meet current highway safety standards, necessitating the demolition of two dozen buildings, including many historic structures.

We must not repeat that mistake.

An elevated highway, even a brand-new one, is ugly. Cities across the country and across the world are taking highways down, not putting them up. From Rochester to Niagara Falls, New Haven to Milwaukee, San Francisco to Seoul, cities much bigger than ours, with a lot more traffic than ours, are removing expressways, reconnecting severed streets and neighborhoods, reclaiming waterfronts and giving modes of transportation other than cars a fighting chance.

A tunnel, meanwhile, would cost between $3 billion and $4.5 billion - triple the cost of the grid at the high end -- and take up to 10 years from planning to completion. Putting a community grid on top of it, a so-called hybrid solution, doesn't change the economics.

Tunnel proponents say, hey, we're worth it. They ignore the fiscal realities of ongoing tunnel maintenance costs, an underfunded Highway Trust Fund and the Trump administration's desire to reduce the federal government's commitment to infrastructure.

Simply put, it's fiscally irresponsible to build a tunnel in a city our size.

The case for a community grid

Once-moribund downtown Syracuse is surging. Old buildings are being renovated and repurposed to meet the demand for urban living. The former Hotel Syracuse is back. This is happening despite the physical barrier of the highway between downtown and the county's largest employers and intellectual assets, Upstate Medical University and Syracuse University. Removing that barrier has the potential to spur new connections, new growth and new investment in downtown.

The community grid would cost $1.3 billion and take four to six years to complete. The elevated highway would come down. Almond Street, no longer hidden beneath it, would become a wider "boulevard." (Heaven forbid it becomes another commercial strip, tacky and hostile to pedestrians, like Erie Boulevard.)

Drivers along this north-south spine would have multiple options for taking east-west streets to their destinations, or they could reconnect with Interstate 81 on either end.

Removing the elevated highway would open 7 acres of downtown land for new buildings, public parks, event spaces, and bike and bus lanes.

Residents of Syracuse's South Side bore the brunt of I-81's construction. They ought to reap the fruits of its deconstruction, through good-paying jobs, affordable housing, neighborhood revitalization and attention to reducing concentrated poverty.

Put your cards on the table

It takes a huge leap of imagination to envision what Syracuse would be like without Interstate 81. How would our daily commutes be affected? Would visitors and commercial traffic choose to bypass the city, or drive through it as a slower speed? What might spring up once the highway comes down? We must have the courage to find out.

Syracuse is wary of big promises, perhaps rightly so. We've seen a parade of silver bullets and shiny objects that were supposed to save our city, only to fail. Common sense told us they would. Common sense is telling us now what to do about I-81. We just need to listen.

Mayor Ben Walsh put his cards on the table in his January State of the City speech. He sees the I-81 project as "rocket fuel" for the city, bringing in new tax revenue, improving neighborhoods and pointing the way to the future.

There are people and institutions out there just waiting for the right moment to show their cards. This is that moment.

A decision on I-81 is supposed to come in 2019. That will end one process and begin a set of new ones -- working out what replaces the viaduct, reimagining a more robust I-481, assembling and training a workforce, translating hopes and promises into action. If we are to hit the ground running, that work must begin now.

I-81 is the defining issue of our generation. To the people and institutions who consider themselves leaders in this community: It's time to lead. This is too important for you to sit on the sidelines until a decision is made in Albany. By then, it'll be too late.

The community grid is hands-down the best solution for replacing Interstate 81. We're ready commit to it. Now who's with us?

Syracuse.com editorials

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