NAL Higgins peace bridge
A Submission from the Office of Buffalo, New York area Congressman Brian Higgins
(A Brief Foreword by NAL publisher Doug Draper – Plans for the Peace Bridge move forward in the wake of concerns continuously expressed by a Buffalo west-side neighbourhood group about the quality of air people in the neighbourhood breath with all the idling cars and trucks stopped for inspection at the border, and the destruction of heritage buildings in the neighbourhood to make way for a larger plaza for Duty Free venues, etc.)
Buffalo area Congressman Brian Higgins addresses Peace Bridge challenges. File photo
This February 28th, the Peace Bridge Authority (PBA) approved a contract to begin Phase II of a project to widen the approach to the Peace Bridge plaza in Buffalo, NY.
“The Peace Bridge traffic bottleneck leads to frustration and unpredictability that keeps people away from the border and closes off economic opportunity,” said Congressman Brian Higgins (NY-26), a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security and Congressional Northern Border Caucus. “The widening effort is another component in an overall strategy to reduce congestion and improve the bridge to better support a robust cross border relationship.”
The widening project began in August 2013 with approval of a $1.3 million contract for phase I which was completed last year. The contract for Phase II was awarded to Pike Co., which has been involved with numerous projects in Western New York including most recently the Buffalo Zoo’s Artic Edge exhibit and work at Canalside, and came in under budget at $5 million.
In total the project will provide an additional 215,000 square feet of approach space for traffic entering the U.S. The expanded capacity will allow for better access to NEXUS lanes and an improved traffic flow. This phase is set for completion in late 2014.
This is one of four projects currently in development relative to the Peace Bridge. Other work includes: a project by the New York State Department of Transportation to reconfigure the connections between the plaza and the I-190, which removed traffic from Front Park and is in the final stages of environmental review; the new customs house; and the recently completed booths for the pre-inspection pilot.
Earlier this week Congressman Higgins joined U.S. and Canadian leaders in officially kicking off a pilot project at the Peace Bridge that allows for trucks to be pre-inspected on the Canadian side of the border. The project provides a promising opportunity to reduce congestion and provide environmental and economic benefits.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)
Niagara At Large 
If nothing else, this post affirms our belief that nothing keeps a politician from his pronouncements–not even (or maybe, especially) reality. Our finest elected and appointed swooped in to trumpet their hollow triumphs, to support their questionable endeavors; to do what government does best: stare reality in the face (a reality that informed citizens can clearly see) and either ignore or deny it.
What is changing, though, is the response to this threadbare sideshow. Citizens are uprising from all quarters to dismantle the government’s apparatus of deceit, and, with real science and fact, to replace it with Truth.
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Higgins, Schumer, et. al. are locked in an endless cycle of government doublespeak. It is untrue. It’s simpleminded. It’s tiresome. No attempt at mitigation will restore the health of this neighborhood. If implemented, these measures will only bring more diesel traffic into this densely populated urban environment. No matter how swiftly the traffic moves, the toxic threat remains.
Schumer says ‘it’s about the economy.’ Whose economy?
Certainly not ours, as 90% of the 3,000-plus trucks a day that cross here are bound for points beyond. The only mark they leave here is on our overburdened infrastructure. ‘It was worth waiting for’ Schumer tells us; but is it worth dying for? Because until the trucks are gone from the Peace Bridge, that is the fate for the West Side of Buffalo.
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This project addresses making entry from Fort Erie into Buffalo more convenient. What is being done to make entry from Buffalo into Fort Erie more convenient?
Is this project the result of building the truck pre-inspection facility in Canada? Will this pre-inspection centre cause an increase in concentration of truck emission pollution within Fort Erie?
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The bridge situation can only get worse in the future, Fort Erie will be breaking ground springtime on the new MotorSports Racetrack that will attract over 100,000 people to Fort Erie. and Niagara. We should be proactive and let the Abbassador Bridge people of Detroit, build their Ambbassador/Niagara bridge ASAP. The land for this bridge is already assembled on both sides of the border, it was stalled by a Fort Erie council at the time that had ties to the Peace Bridge, the Town’s former manager now works for that bridge Ron Reinas, also the Mayor was an appointee to that same bridge. A lot of comments made by people on council were out and out lies about that company. It should be noticed that no taxpayers money would need to be involved. The Peace Bridge was built by private money and scooped up during the depression by governments on both sides of the border. Fort Erie now has a council that reflects the people of Fort Erie not the special interests, affiliated with the Chamber of Commerce.
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Bill, this “pilot” program is just two booths in Fort Erie (and a net gain overall of only one booth, because the trucks processed in Canada still need to pass through a booth when they reach the US) and will process only a fraction of commercial traffic and only from Monday to Thursday From 8am to 4pm. The pilot program will prove nothing except, given sufficient space and equipment, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Officers can perform their duties anywhere, so long as the atmosphere supports human life. Beyond that, their just spinning wheels.
But to answer your questions: nothing is being done to alleviate wait time in Canada; yes, diesel emissions will increase in Fort Erie if more trucks are processed there, and the prevailing winds will still push those same emissions into the West Side of Buffalo as well.
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Bill – renown medical scientist and researcher answers your question: Another Voice: Pre-inspection program won’t fix emission problems at the Peace Bridge
The Buffalo News on March 1, 2014 – 9:30 AM
By Jamson S. Lwebuga-Mukasa
Jamson S. Lwebuga-Mukasa, M.D., is a pulmonologist, epidemiologist and founder, president and CEO of Respiratory & Environmental Exposure Consultants.
Pre-inspection will not improve air quality in Buffalo’s West Side. That is a fact, despite the rhetoric of Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, who subscribe to the flawed logic that speeding the flow of traffic by inspecting a percentage of trucks in Canada will fix the problem. They are wrong.
Whether truck inspections occur on U.S. or Canadian soil, prevailing winds continue to blow toxic diesel exhaust from Fort Erie across the Niagara River, and into the lungs of West Side children. Do these children not deserve the clean air you enjoy? We have been told that new federal emissions standards will reduce pollution in the West Side. This is false.
A cloud of smoke trailing out of big rigs’ exhaust pipes contains billions of microscopic pollution particles. Only the largest of these toxic particles are regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. West Side residents are being made sick by much smaller “ultrafine” particles.
According to my research at the University at Buffalo and internationally renowned experts from leading research institutions – the Harvard School of Public Health, Clarkson University, Columbia and University of Washington – ultrafine diesel exhaust particles are definitively linked from Peace Bridge truck traffic to the disproportionately high rates of asthma, cancer and other diseases among West Side residents.
Some argue that this research is “woefully out of date.” They contend that recent changes to EPA emissions standards have improved West Side air quality. However, ultrafine particles are not regulated by the EPA and remain as plentiful today as they were in 2011, when our research was published by the Health Effects Institute.
New York State officials, on the other hand, have attempted to invalidate this research by releasing an invalidated study of their own in October 2013. Their studies not only employed a flawed methodology, but failed to examine the alarmingly high concentrations of ultrafine particles in the West Side. The State Department of Environmental Conservation cannot study ultrafine particles because it does not have the necessary equipment.
Pre-inspection is not the answer to the West Side’s asthma epidemic, and no one should dare say otherwise. Each day, scores of West Side children are hospitalized for asthma complications. They will become another permanent generation of sick community residents. This will not stop until you, your family and your friends call upon local leaders to cut the rhetoric and produce a responsible solution based on scientific facts, not science fiction.
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