steel said:
...city residents pay the price for the ease and convenience of the suburbanite.
While I don't entirely disagree with you on this matter, I don't blame it all on suburban convenience as you say. First of all, this type of problem is not specific only to Buffalo, it's a by-product of the relative boom-time of the 50's when people across the country took to the highways for travel, as well as exercising some of their newfound economic might but buying the one thing that's definitely not being made anymore: land.
I agree with BuffCity on the claim that we could have had it much worse. Sure it's a shame what's happened to the grand old boulevards of Olmstead's plan. However, I don't think you have to look very far to see some far greater travesties. I think the Kensington and Scajaquada were designed pretty damn well to fit into their surroundings considering the highway land grabs that were going on everywhere else.
The I-190 on the other hand
is horrible, but even then it's perfectly fit to occupy a narrow strip of what was then cheap, useless land. Where would you have placed it? Just be glad they didn't plow it through downtown! And I don't see it all as the Thruway's fault, either. Elevated and ugly as it may be, it's very design allows for uninterrupted travel across the right of way. I see the problem there as being the horrible land usage
under the highway that has rendered the waterfront virtually inaccessible, not the highway itself.
But to blame it on suburban convenience alone would be shortsighted. You have to see the whole picture and think of it as economic, commercial, recreational, and industrial convenience as well. We'd sure be up a creek without a paddle without them, you think it's bad now. Tough as it may sound, the city isn't lost in innocence itself.