Their only other choice is to expand the road by redeveloping the entire area, and that will likely kill off the entirety of the area for "what it's famous for", but would likely result in less destructive flooding, etc. Since right now it's basically pavement on top of what was a dirt path 100 years ago, no real engineering ever went into it.
Given anyone's aversity to killing off active economic zones it's going to be the one way band aid for the next few years until it turns into a flooded parking lot, again, and they really have no choice.