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Re: Since when are buses allowed on the Parkways?

Posted by WillD on Thu Jul 17 20:40:20 2008, in response to Re: Since when are buses allowed on the Parkways?, posted by GP38/R42 Chris on Wed Jul 16 15:15:02 2008.

"The building of the bridges is an example of his foresight and vision," Sid Shapiro says in his quiet way. "I've often been astonished myself that he was so right in those days, and not only so right, but so indispensably right. Mr. Moses had an instinctive feeling that someday politicians would try to put buses on the parkways, and that would break down the whole parkway concept - and he used to say to us fellows, 'Let's design the bridges so the clearance is alright for passenger cars but not for anything else.' All the original bridges were designed with nine feet of clearance at the curb. Later he went up to eleven feet, but that had the same effect. Well yes, buses could use the center lane, but that's an impractical thing. No bus would do that. Mr. Moses did this because he knew that something might happen after he was dead and gone. He wrote legislation [clauses prohibiting the use of parkways by "buses and other commercial vehicles"] but he knew you could change the legislation. You can't change a bridge after it's up. And the result of this is that a bus from New York couldn't use the parkways if we wanted it to." A quiet smile broke across Shapiro's seamed face, and he almost laughed as a pleasant recollection crossed his mind. "You know," he said, "we've had cases where buses mistakenly got on a parkways - we had this on the Grand Central Parkway several times, I remember - buses from a foreign state, I suppose, and the first bridge stopped them dead. One had the roof rolled up like the top of a sardine can."