|
|
| Re: Brooklyn Dodgers (on topic) (464932) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > SubChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Re: Brooklyn Dodgers (on topic) |
|
|
Posted by WillD on Mon Jul 23 15:15:07 2007, in response to Re: Brooklyn Dodgers (on topic), posted by GP38/R42 Chris on Mon Jul 23 14:33:13 2007. NYC, as a city and it's surrounding areas built on islands, that need good roads, tunnels and bridges to access them, it's more important than cities that are not a part of a whole river, and island configuration. NYC and Long Island would have choked if not for it's bridges and tunnels and good roads to access them.You have it backwards. If NYC is an island and access and space are at a premium then you would want to go with the mode that allows the greatest number of people to pass through a passage of a given cross-sectional area per hour and uses the least amount of land for those people travelling into the city. In that case the car is the worst mode for NYC to depend on, the capacity of any road bridge or tunnel will be far less than a subway or commuter rail bridge or tunnel, and all those people coming into the city with cars create traffic on the surface streets and require parking lots that waste valuable land. What little industry existed on LI choked because of the Port Authority's failure to build a freight tunnel to the LIRR, and no new industry was able to spring up because of Moses' stubborn insistence that LI be either suburban development or parkland. Oh please. This is not a NY phenomena, this is true everywhere nowadays that it's hard to get things built. But it certainly seems a good deal harder in NYC. DC's entire 103 mile subway system has sprung into existence since Moses was driven from his many offices. The same is true of MARTA and nearly true of BART. Chicago added an entirely new line to Midway Airport. Even Philadelphia has managed to add some 15 or 16 miles of subway to their system in addition to the commuter rail improvements made in the 1980s. In all that NYC has built the Archer Ave extension and the 63rd St tunnel and connector, and that was heavily contested. Admittedly NYC suffered worst at Moses' reign of terror, but the subway *should* have recovered by now. Instead the politicians are afraid of installing another leader who can subvert them for his or her own goals, and neighborhood groups are determined not to be pushed aside. The problem in NYC is very clearly a reaction to Moses' tactics, and his legacy of bulldozing neighborhoods will likely hang over the city for decades to come. One book that only writes one side of the story from one angle? Have you read the book you're deriding so viciously? If you did you'd likely find it a far more moderate piece of literature than you make it out to be. Caro makes it clear that early on in Moses' career as Parks Commissioner he was a force for good, scraping parks together out of the corners of farms on LI so families out from NYC's crowded neighborhoods wouldn't have to pay to swim at a rocky beach. Yes, his parkways were a good thing back then when Jericho Road, Sunrise Highway and a few other thoroughfares were thoroughly choked with traffic every saturday and sunday during the summer. He also did tremendous good when he parlayed his state posts into the city, clearing out the Tammany position-fillers, getting long talked-about projects like the Triboro Bridge built and so on. He cleaned up Bryant Park, then moved on to completely redo Central Park, removing so many of Tammany's signs of occupation. However, Caro also makes it clear that something changed in the 1930s after LaGuardia made him construction coordinator. LaGuardia fought with him on a continuous basis by the end of his term as mayor, and those that followed didn't have the stomach to take on Moses. Moses steadily became deaf as he aged and by the mid 1950s not only was he out of touch with the changing demographics of the area he was building in he was too stubborn to change his views and even if he had been willing to listen it is unlikely he would have heard most of what wassaid. Those parkways which 25 years before had been a godsend as a way for car owners in NYC to escape the city for a weekend were instead a daily slog for millions of commuters, an unending source of frustration for everyone connected to them which continues to today. The Long Island Railroad offered the capacity to carry those commuters into the city, but its cars and track were in deplorable shape and it had no money for improvements. Because Moses was locked firmly in a 1920s mindset and never drove the roads he was shoving down NY's throat after the 1940s there was no way in hell he was going to be able to fix NY or LI's traffic problems no matter how much money he spent. |
|
|
|