Thruway exit will only add
to our problems

By Roland Miklem

Statement to Wayne County Supervisors

I would like to state my irrevocable opposition not only to the proposed Thruway ramp to access the Newark and Phelps area, but to any other additions to the highway infrastructure anywhere in the region without serious efforts to find alternatives.

We have to fully appreciate the predicament that we and the nation have gotten ourselves into with respect to the automobile culture. We are caught in the grip of this culture, and must gain control before it totally takes over our lives. Instead of a Pavlovian response to the quantum growth in vehicular traffic on our thoroughfares we need to begin planning now for a future in which we control the automobiles and not the other way around. The cycle of more cars - more roads - more cars must be broken.

The ways that communities deal with this problem has awesome implications, implications that extend beyond their own boundaries to impact every other corner of the globe. It has been established with near 100% certainty that human activity - chiefly the burning of fossil fuels - is negatively altering the world's climate. To bring this trend under control will require massive reductions in carbon emissions, over half of which are the products of gasoline combustion. The global biosphere cannot afford the luxury of motor vehicle proliferation. And as anyone with experience in the public arena can tell you, we cannot wait for policy changes from above: we have to take our own initiatives. The reality that few other communities will take on what is clearly their responsibility as well, is no excuse for us to shirk ours.

The automobile creates it's own demands; demands for space, demands on natural resources, demands on human resources. Every tree removed, every foot of green space covered with asphalt, every animal pushed out of it's habitat, every acre of cropland taken out of production to accommodate the use of motor vehicles, chips away at the cohesiveness, the operational capacity, and the beauty of the unique product of Creation that we live on. And like violence against humans, the more that it happens, the more desensitized to it we become.

Motor vehicles destroy community. Because they make possible the wide dispersal of people, they also make themselves indispensable to the conduct of everyday human affairs. Hence urban sprawl, shopping malls, traffic jams, long commutes, health-threatening loss of air quality, added miles of commercial strips, and drive-in service for everything from food to funerals.

We must find alternatives to further macadamization, and the will to make them work. For those inclined to look only at the economics of the issue, here are some things to consider. The current 104 project - converting a 5.8 mile stretch between Furnace and Pound Roads from two lanes to four will run close to $13.5 million. These are the DOT's own figures. On the other hand, operating a twice daily east-west bus service on Rtes. 31 and 104 - with connections to Syracuse and Rochester - would amount to less than $100,000/yr., based on figures provided by the Genesee Transportation Council. If the state gasoline tax were increased by only a half cent, New York State would realize an additional $25 million /yr. in revenue, which could be earmarked for public transportation in areas where such is lacking or inadequate.

What is our goal? To build more thruway ramps so as to bring in more fast food establishments, more service stations, more shopping malls, and the inevitable demand for more and wider roads? This may bring more money to the region, but it will hardly improve the real quality of human life - an intangible that money cannot buy. And whatever the short term gain, no new highway infrastructure can offset the economic and/or social cost of a destabilized atmosphere, a stressed out life support system, or the uglification brought on when brick and asphalt replace trees, open fields, marshes, and farmland.

If we have to make money by abusing beyond the point of no return what has been put here for our wise use and spiritual uplift, we remain poor, no matter how fat our bank accounts become.