By Joan Marans Dim
The world was allegedly created in six days (God rested on the seventh day), so why is it taking New York City so long — some 90 years, or possibly longer — to create the Second Avenue Subway?
According to the MTA, proposals to build a north-south subway line along Second Avenue date back to 1929. But it wasn’t until March 2007 — 78 years later — that the first construction contract for Phase One of the Second Avenue Subway was awarded. Tentative plans aim at a 2016 completion, although several dates have proliferated.
Perhaps it takes a God-like figure in this metropolis to get monumental tasks done. As it happens, New York City had such a being, Robert Moses, often referred to as the “Master Builder.”
Source: New York Public Library.
In 1929, Moses wasn’t keen on the mass transit and therefore probably not on the Second Avenue Subway as well. The Second Avenue Subway’s slow progress is clarified by reporter William Bredderman, who interviewed Moses biographer and author Robert Caro for the online magazine Realcity. (Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and The Fall of New York — qualifies him as the uber expert on Moses.) Writes Bredderman:
“According to Caro, the city attempted to build the Second Avenue line first in 1942 and again in 1954. Both times Moses prevented funds from being allocated to the project, preferring to instead spend the money building expressways through densely-populated neighborhoods. If you’ve ever been on (or near) the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the BQE or The Major Deegan, you can thank Moses.”
Moses routinely built bridges, tunnels, and roadways that transformed the city, without an iota’s consideration for what might be lost. The result was huge gashes in densely populated working-class neighborhoods to make way for roadways and expressways. Neighborhoods were destroyed, forever. Who can drive these expressways without seeing the havoc wrought? Old timers who had once lived in these now devastated neighborhoods still curse Moses.
An early example of Moses’ disdain for mass transit is also evident in his first major public project, Jones Beach, which begun in the 1920s and opened in 1929. Almost immediately after the opening, motorists jammed the city’s parkways in a beeline to get to what is still considered one of the world’s most beautiful parks. However, accommodation for public transportation to Jones Beach was not a part of Moses’ plan.
Moses, of course had his critics, including: Caro, activist Jane Jacobs, and historian and architectural critic 0 Comments on Robert Moses and the Second Avenue Subway as of 1/1/1900
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