NYSDOT's Misguided Vision

$1.4 BILLION dollars is the highest level of investment in this region in recent memory. This funding needs to work for our communities, not against them.

The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) wants to spend $1.4 billion taxpayer dollars to widen 30 miles of State Route 17 between Harriman and Wurtsboro. More lanes on Route 17 will not solve periodic congestion, and NYSDOT's own figures show that it rarely has congestion. Sprawling highways notoriously generate worse and worse traffic — just look to L.A. for a famous example — and that's due to induced demand, a proven phenomenon to describe how increasing road capacity leads to more people driving on that road. Adding capacity on Route 17 will create worse traffic over time. Additionally, NYSDOT's proposal would actually undermine our local economy, by attracting more cars to national chain stores and strip malls at the highway interchanges, sucking commerce away from the locally-owned businesses in our towns and villages. 

If the State devotes so much money to unnecessary new construction, the agency will fall further behind on maintenance of existing roads and bridges, which also means less money for sidewalks, trails and public transit. Our communities will be worse off if the State government is allowed to impose its current Route 17 project proposal on us. Additionally, our tax burdens will increase as we add more mileage of roadways to maintain.

The issue is more urgent than ever in 2025, because NYSDOT is persisting in this reckless choice based on an outdated assumption of bountiful federal funding, at precisely the moment the federal government will likely reduce federal funds to our state. 

Our state and local elected officials need to decide: are they going to fund highway lobbyists’ vision of our region, or are they going to support our communities’ vision for our region?