Chapter 40 – Point of No Return

By 1952, capital revenues from the highway and bridge tolls was half a billion dollars. Moses now had more money for development than the city. Allied to this, the U.S. government were proposing a new Federal Highways fund. Moses increased his plans to use up the money.

Only the Port Authority had more funds than Moses. Moses decided to cooperate with his old enemy in order to tap into their funds to carry out his new programs. The Port Authority realised they had an identification of interest with Moses. Both their plans could only be achieved by cooperation. They agreed to build three new bridges and a connected series of new expressways across the city and stretching out into the suburbs. The two authorities were to make vast profits out of the road tolls; in effect out of the traffic chaos they were creating. Behind Moses was the coalition of special interests: oil companies, the motor industry and politicians, known colloquially as “The Highwaymen.”

In 1955, the two authorities had combined funds of one and a quarter billion dollars, more than enough to create a mass transit system, serving the city into the future and removing thousands of cars from the choked roads. Instead, the two authorities spent their money on the automobile. Not a cent was spent of mass transportation.

Travel on the subways were inhuman. The crowds pushed and shoved on the platforms before being crammed like sardines into ageing trains. By 1965, crowds were being jammed into the trains just short of suffocation. Because of lack of ventilation systems, the subways almost too hot to bear. Trains were constantly breaking down. From being one of the safest subways in the world, the New York system had degenerated into one of the most dangerous.

The floors were filthy. Walls were covered in abhorrent graffiti. Trips into the city from the suburbs took more than an hour.

Railroads were in a bad way as well. Moses’s highways had sucked all the funding away, the highwaymen providing the lobbying and support. The railroads grew poorer and started showing losses. Fares had to be raised and services cut back. This pushed even more people onto the highways in their clean, air-conditioned cars rather than use the crushed, dirty carriages.

The total cost of Moses’s treatment of the railroads and subways needs to be measured in the effect on commuters’ lives. A new illness was diagnosed, “Commuter Stress Syndrome”, and one in four commuters suffered from it. The commute on the starved subways and railroads dominated peoples’ lives. Many considered it more taxing than their actual work. The lives of the residents of New York were being eaten up by the attempt to move from one place to another.

Another effect of the highways was the spreading out of New York into suburbs with spaced out housing but little local infrastructure such as stores and theatres. With this type of low-density housing, mass transit is un-economic. There would need to be a change to high-density housing to allow enough people to use the stations. Building expressways no longer make sense. Only mass transit – the combination of buses, railroads and subways – made any sense. Robert Moses was planning to build a new highway costing $500M. If only $20M were spent on a new railroad, the impact on reducing congestion would be far greater.

Robert Moses was not interested in mass transit. It would mean revising his plans. He quashed all discussion of rapid transit plans, even though they had been fully worked out. The highways and bridges went ahead and as each section opened the congestion got worse. In fact, the bridges had been deliberately built with such low clearance that buses couldn’t pass through as it would have ruined Moses’s original concept. One man’s dream had become a nightmare for generations to come.

Analysis & Key Takeaways

• Moses loved power not to become wealthy because he was already wealthy for the most part. He wanted the grandeur of building amazing things. The Borough presidents are powerful at least they thought they were but they aren’t actually and so in the 1965; this turns out wrong under Moses; the board of estimate should have more power…borough courtesy was the logic that borough presidents should only push something that was approved by the borough mayor;
• He was not beholden to public opinion; Moses used economic forces rather than political bias. Non Democratic forced was the machine.

Chapter 1	Chapter 2	Chapter 3
Chapter 4	Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8	Chapter 9
Chapter 10	Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14	Chapter 15
Chapter 16	Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20	Chapter 21
Chapter 22	Chapter 23	Chapter 24
Chapter 25	Chapter 26	Chapter 27
Chapter 28	Chapter 29	Chapter 30
Chapter 31	Chapter 32	Chapter 33
Chapter 35	Chapter 36	Chapter 37
Chapter 38	Chapter 39	Chapter 40
Chapter 41	Chapter 42	Chapter 43
Chapter 44	Chapter 45	Chapter 46
Chapter 47	Chapter 48	Chapter 49
Chapter 50

Chapter 10 – The Best Bill-Drafter in Albany

Moses had learned the lessons of power. As a Reformer, he had advocated that only the legislature could approve budgets. The Heads of Departments could only recommend. However, as he was now a Head of Department, this would restrict his liberty. Therefore, Parks was to be an exception. Parks would therefore be an independent body with its own authority. The President’s term would be six years, three times the length of the Governor’s, and the Governor would be unable to dismiss him unless there was proven misconduct. His previous support for free and open debate. However, now, with the exception of Al Smith, nobody else would know what was in the enabling bill.

Hidden in the bill was the ability to acquire land by appropriation, i.e. by walking on the land and simply asking for it without redress or automatic compensation. Also, the naming of the main service roads as parkways rather than highways got around building restrictions as parkways were not previously mentioned in any highway laws. If the bill was passed, the Parks Commission, with Moses as its President, would have as much power as was contained in the New York City Charter.

There was not much interest in the bill when it went to the House in early 1924 and when it went up for vote it was nodded through unopposed. Moses and Smith ensured that the Commissioners elected would allow Moses to get on with the job, and at their first meeting, Moses was elected as Chairman.

  Analysis & Key Takeaways

• If you do create a new authority, be sure to design it to your advantage. With any luck, no one will take the authority seriously at the start so that you can package it for maximum appeal. That’s precisely what Robert Moses did;
• Parkways were not mentioned in any highway laws; therefore you can simply skip around a technicality to gain more influence.
• Taking credit for other people’s work? Moses didn’t give credit to the employees who had done a lot of work to map out a restructuring of the bureaucracy in the Parks system. Moses was hilariously open to stealing another person’s idea; Moses actually claimed a guy who had written the vast majority of the plan for reorganizing the civil service actually plagiarized from Moses…Moses wanted to reorganize the civil service; creating state agencies;

Chapter 1	Chapter 2	Chapter 3
Chapter 4	Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8	Chapter 9
Chapter 10	Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14	Chapter 15
Chapter 16	Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20	Chapter 21
Chapter 22	Chapter 23	Chapter 24
Chapter 25	Chapter 26	Chapter 27
Chapter 28	Chapter 29	Chapter 30
Chapter 31	Chapter 32	Chapter 33
Chapter 35	Chapter 36	Chapter 37
Chapter 38	Chapter 39	Chapter 40
Chapter 41	Chapter 42	Chapter 43
Chapter 44	Chapter 45	Chapter 46
Chapter 47	Chapter 48	Chapter 49
Chapter 50

Chapter 9 – A Dream

The population of New York City was increasing rapidly in the 1920s. Green space and vacant land was being sacrificed to tenement housing. The need for housing was conflicting with the increasing desire for leisure. The Model T Ford had started to roll off the production line and the increased income of the population meant that more people had leisure and the mobility to use it. However, their mobility was restricted. There were limited green spaces outside of the city and getting there was difficult. The streets were narrow and there were no bridges across the Hudson; Ferries had to be used. The few local parks became as busy as the city the people had escaped from. However, there were bridges across the East River to Queens and Brooklyn, and beyond them was Long Island.

Long Island was a perfect place to escape from the city, but the locals strongly resisted non-residents visiting or buying land. Long Island was also the place where the powerful robber barons had settled and they wanted their privacy. The did everything to repel the general public, especially from the beautiful beaches of North Shore and Long Island Sound, where many of the rich had their mansions. This usually consisted in blocking main roads with armed guards and allow many of the minor roads to fall into disrepair. Despite all these inconveniences, New Yorkers flocked to Long Island. To Reformers, Long Island was the land of opportunity for parks and leisure. The two main problems were: how to obtain the land, and how would people get there?

Moses wrote a report to support the establishment of a Parks Authority on behalf of the New York association with revolutionary scope. He urged a bond issue of $15M to support permanent improvements to conservation and recreation.

Al Smith had little appreciation of recreation, but he did respond to graphic presentations; what it would look like. In 1922, Moses persuaded Smith to visit the sites he had in mind and used his eloquence to paint the picture. Smith agreed to support the necessary legislation but not until 1924, after the next election. However, the plan was supported by voters and the press. The Governor soon realised that supporting parks would help him in the election.

As Moses travelled around Long Island in 1923, his vision expanded to include 30,000 acres of parkland connected by numerous parkways and highways. Moses gained booth Smith’s and Belle Moskowitz’s approval. Smith offered to make Moses President of the Long Island State Park Commission. Moses accepted.

Analysis & Key Takeaways

• Moses reported under Al Smith and believed that the government should be help accountable between elections. The governor has spending power through the legislature; state interest in expenditure will lead to more democratic engagement. Illustrate your ideas with visuals;
• Robert Moses did his homework to map out the enter park plan as well as the entire infrastructure plan with the bridges;
• Do your homework to understand the situation before making decisions; Moses understood how the government worked and memorized the structure of that government. Invent a new organization to gain influence and then raise a Bond offering in the MUNIs to circumvent the budgetary constraints that others have imposed on you;
• Issuing bonds and or generating revenue from tolls gave him the ability to avoid accountability or balancing against the system; Raise Bonds for New Projects: Bonds for various projects like a bridge. West side project would cut a neighborhood in half…it would condemn several homes. River dale community was not consulted. Moses would destroy the lagoons near the cloverleaf of river dale.

Chapter 1	Chapter 2	Chapter 3
Chapter 4	Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8	Chapter 9
Chapter 10	Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14	Chapter 15
Chapter 16	Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20	Chapter 21
Chapter 22	Chapter 23	Chapter 24
Chapter 25	Chapter 26	Chapter 27
Chapter 28	Chapter 29	Chapter 30
Chapter 31	Chapter 32	Chapter 33
Chapter 35	Chapter 36	Chapter 37
Chapter 38	Chapter 39	Chapter 40
Chapter 41	Chapter 42	Chapter 43
Chapter 44	Chapter 45	Chapter 46
Chapter 47	Chapter 48	Chapter 49
Chapter 50

Chapter 8 – The Taste of Power

In 1923, Moses was still Secretary of the New York Association. He often visited the Senate on behalf of Governor Al Smith but had no official position, so had to kneel on the carpet. He was, however, in the Governor’s inner circle comprised of both Tammanys and Reformers, as well as Belle Markowitz.

Being close to Smith, Moses found that if he had a good idea, it was more likely to be implemented. It was the proximity to power. Smith asked Moses to look at the penal system. Moses planned to create small industries in reform schools for youthful offenders and a generally more liberal policy. This was supported. He also made up plans to reduce rail crossings that held up cars. This was also forced through.

Moses now had the taste for power. He liked being on the inside, even if it was inside something he used to despise. His support for reform turned to support for Al Smith and Tammany Hall.

In 1923, Smith secured a paid position for Moses in charge of the very industries in state prisons that Moses had earlier recommended. Moses didn’t want the job. Again and again, Smith tried to give Moses a position but Moses always refused. But one day there was something he did want and that something was parks.

Analysis & Key Takeaways

• Moses was a turncoat; he despised Tammany Hall until it was beneficial to him. Technically being consistent is even possible as an elected official, let alone an unelected on such as Moses…
• Moses turned down job offers from Al Smith time and time again. Until he got what he wanted which was parks…Must have seen something others didn’t understand which was that parks are at the core of urban planning; Moses himself believes that the best cover for a revenue generating poll is a patch of grass.
• Gain influence over parks in New York is a critical first major step for Robert Moses. As history show, he was also probably discriminator towards those who did not align with his interests for example poor folks, Republicans, African-Americans although he himself never explicitly was racist in a direct manner, just generally, Moses was a kind of proxy for economic and political will of the Philosophy King type. In other words, he ran New York projects through cunning, pragmatic manipulation and influence peddling. The net effect being a controversial, singular vision that impacts New York today….

Chapter 1	Chapter 2	Chapter 3
Chapter 4	Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8	Chapter 9
Chapter 10	Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14	Chapter 15
Chapter 16	Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20	Chapter 21
Chapter 22	Chapter 23	Chapter 24
Chapter 25	Chapter 26	Chapter 27
Chapter 28	Chapter 29	Chapter 30
Chapter 31	Chapter 32	Chapter 33
Chapter 35	Chapter 36	Chapter 37
Chapter 38	Chapter 39	Chapter 40
Chapter 41	Chapter 42	Chapter 43
Chapter 44	Chapter 45	Chapter 46
Chapter 47	Chapter 48	Chapter 49
Chapter 50