With regard to Charles Garland’s letter, “Legislator: I-81 viaduct project promised equity. Residents are still waiting” (April 21, 2026:)
One of Garland’s complaints is that when the project is completed, Martin Luther King East will be a dead end. When the New York State Department of Transportation released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement in 2021, that end of MLK would have been the site of the roundabout where traffic on what will be Business Loop 81 would make the transition between the freeway portion south of the roundabout to the portion of BL81 on Almond Street with traffic lights and a 30 mph speed limit. Anyone from that part of Syracuse planning to go south could have gone to the roundabout and turned right.
People in Syracuse lost their minds at the thought of a roundabout next to Dr. King Elementary School. Save81 published memes of out-of-control cars flying through roundabouts, never mind that roundabouts are considered safer than four-way intersections. But NYSDOT listened and moved the roundabout to its current location 1,000 feet north of MLK at Van Buren. They also made MLK East a dead-end street, so it is now virtually impossible for traffic on BL81 to threaten the school…