It’s not true. Seattle to Vancouver (either BC and OR) is well under half the distance between Moscow and St Petersburg.
A US-style freeway would still cut time off the journey, but they’re in no way comparable trips, distance or timewise.
I’d be impressed with anyone that could get through the Peace Arch border crossing in time to do that journey in under 2 hrs.
Not to mention averaging well over 70mph without attracting the attention of the police.
Though a lot of those were also tested outside of the country decades before. I expect for calls to privatize the water system here like what was done in Ecuador, Colombia or the rebuilt Iraq.
But yeah I expect a lot of that bullshit went on after Katrina since so much of the table was flipped over there that much bullshit could be gotten away with.
2 Likes
Many of his “public” works are being removed or destroyed in order to create a more pedestrian friendly version of the city instead of his glorious vision of cars everywhere!
The Superblock? Terrible idea, gone. Parkways? Let’s put buses on them. Giant housing projects? Replaced with mixed income housing.
He made big projects at the expense of a lot of little people. Amanda Burden has had to work very hard to make this city much more user friendly and she’s doing it while working with the people, not in spite of them. Robert Moses was the worst. The absolute worst. He was power unchecked and his public works were designed only for people with cars or money.
Taken in context for the era and compared to other sociopath types who use their power and influence exclusively for personal gain, I’d argue Moses did some good along the way. Yes, many of his ideas were terrible with lasting legacies of discrimination but you have to admit that some were (still are) beneficial.
I don’t hear arguments for tearing down the bridges he built - Verazzano, Triborough, Throg’s Neck, Hudson, Whitestone, etc…or closing the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel, Jones Beach, Lincoln Center and UN Headquarters. These projects don’t benefit just rich, white folk.
While the overall impact of many of Moses’s projects continues to be debated, their sheer scale across the urban landscape is indisputable. The peak of Moses’s construction occurred during the economic duress of the Great Depression, and despite that era’s woes, Moses’s projects were completed in a timely fashion, and have been reliable public works since—which compares favorably to the contemporary delays New York City officials have had redeveloping the Ground Zero site of the former World Trade Center, or the technical snafus surrounding Boston’s Big Dig project.
…
During his tenure as chief of the state park system, the state’s inventory of parks grew to nearly 2,600,000 acres (1,100,000 ha). By the time he left office, he had built 658 playgrounds in New York City alone, plus 416 miles (669 km) of parkways and 13 bridges.
[quote=“MikeKStar, post:66, topic:57832”]
These projects don’t benefit just rich, white folk.
[/quote]Now. You forgot the word now. Because when Jones Beach was built it most assuredly did, given the planned design to make the overpasses to Jones Beach just slightly too short for buses to go there. So the poor had to take cars to get there.
As for the bridges, Moses created the idea that toll bridges would not pay for themselves but that they woudl pay for all of his other projects. So here we are today with $14 tolls to enter New York that go to pay for rebuilding the WTC site. And if it was up to him the Brooklyn-Battery would have been another bridge instead of the uncluttered waterfront approach. He kicked the Dodgers out of Brooklyn, where a stadium (for basketball) would eventually be built anyway,
He was against Shakespeare in the Park. He was for an expressway through the Village. He destroyed a playground to create a parking lot for Tavern on the Green. His “tear it down” philosophy is directly responsible for Penn Station’s demise to create the useless monstrosity we have now. He was against subways and for roadways, and if that’s not beneficial to rich white folk, I don’t know what is. Any good he did was accidental and there’s a reason nobody has consolidated power like that since.
3 Likes
There is disagreement on this:
The co-worker [in Caro’s book] all but implies that Moses purposefully built 204 bridges on Long Island too low for buses or trucks to clear. Due to poorer minorities being largely dependent on public transit, this becomes a testimony to Moses’s racism. This allegation, however, has since been disputed by Bernward Joerges in his essay Do Politics Have Artefacts? On page 8 he writes that “at the time of the parkway building (beginning 1924), Long Island was already considerably well developed in terms of transport. The Manhattan-Long Island railway operated since 1877, and a rather dense system of ordinary roads was in place, parallel and across the parkways. The Long Island Expressway, a true Autobahn intended to relieve traffic congestion on the Island, was built by Moses alongside the Parkways.” Hence, as a segregationist measure, those bridges would be utterly ineffectual. Joerges goes on to give multiple reasons for the bridges’ nature, for example that “[i]n the USA, trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles were prohibited on all parkways. Moses did nothing different on Long Island from any parks commissioner in the country.”
I’m not suggesting Moses be canonized but I think you’re subscribing a lot of motives that may or may not be based in fact. I’ve read Caro’s book several times and subsequent readings paints a more nuanced picture of the man.
Moses was a power-hungry megalomaniac for sure but I disagree that any public benefits derived from his works was purely accidental. The context of the times was heavily influenced by the economic devastation of the Great Depression and New Deal reforms. You also have to take into account the absolute corruption of Tammany Hall who controlled Democratic politics in the area dependent on WPA projects for union jobs.
Nice metaphor.
1 Like
RM sucked for a lot of reasons, but there has been a replacement playground right across the way from that lot ever since, plus a much larger one a stone’s throw away down by the softball fields.
And there’s parking on the streets. Tearing into any greenspace in Central Park is not something to be done lightly, let alone to create an asphalt-covered space that is used for five hours a day by people who can park on a side street. Where’s the extra parking created for any other restaurant in town?
1 Like
The Golden Gate Bridge was built for $35 Million in 1937, which would be the equivalent of about $570 million today. The Hoover Dam was built for about $49 million in 1935, equal to about $834 million today.
The city of Portland is currently preparing to open a new rail line that was originally projected to cost $1.5 billion but is now projected to be completed on time and approximately $34 million under budget. But this doesn’t fit the “government waste” narrative so you’ve probably never heard of it.
7 Likes
[quote=“MikeKStar, post:68, topic:57832”]
The context of the times was heavily influenced by the economic devastation of the Great Depression and New Deal reforms
[/quote]And yet he hung in there through the '60’s. That’s a long time after the Great Depression.
He was a white dude who was convinced that driving was going to be the great savior of New York. The reality is that single-passenger cars are a terrible thing to bring to the city. The fact that he became an old white dude concerned about keeping his power and prestige did not help matters.
People like Amanda Burden are working to reverse so many of his entrenched policies to help, but we’d be a lot further ahead if he’d never sent us down this road (ha!) in the first place.
We’d also meet a lot more project budgets if we treated the workers like they did in the 1930’s. Instead we have all this safety business and pay skilled workers a decent rate.
The horror.
2 Likes
Thanks for calling it out. I may be wrong about which Russian cities they were (this was from a conversation about a decade ago) However, I think the main point still stands. Of course it is a lot easier to build a highway system in the US versus an older and more settled country.
Facts? What are these facts? Resets goalposts.
1 Like
The flaw in this story is the timeline. Northern State Parkway was built 1931, Southern State parkway was built 1949, LIE was built 1958, 27 years after he 1st built bridges too low for buses. My favorite story regarding the LIE was that transit officials begged him to buy a median strip 100 feet wider so that rail might someday be put there. It was dirt cheap because the price jump due to access was yet to come, but RM refused. He never once contributed to mass transit. And a large part of his acquiring parkland was that every acre added to his budgets and power. That’s why you ended up with tiny triangles of grass bearing Parks plaque. The biggest Moses irony is that while spending a lifetime building roads he never learned to drive, always being chauffeured around his empire in a rolling office.
2 Likes
Worker pay and safety may increase the cost of bulding, but it has nothing to do with whether a project meets its budget. The planners are well aware of the current price of labor and budget accordingly.
1 Like
I’m just sayin “moved“ a playground is more accurate than “destroyed.”
As for parking on the streets… 
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the lot was built at the behest of the neighborhood. It wasn’t nearly as wealthy back then but block associations were not without influence.
Moved? Ten years after they knock one down to build a new one is not “moved.”
Playground destroyed, against the wishes of the neighborhood: 1956
http://www.mapsites.net/gotham/sec2/tour5bjsilver1.html
Playground rebuilt: 1967
https://tclf.org/landscapes/west-67th-street-adventure-playground
Oh yeah, he was always listening to what the neighborhood wanted. A real compassionate sort.
3 Likes
