Why did Robert Moses hate mass transit?

[Trainmaster5]

I read " The Power Broker ", a biography of Robert Moses many years ago and I've discussed it over the years. The man had grandiose plans for the downstate region, some good, some bad. I don't think he was against mass transit, per se. I think the book came to conclusion that he held poor people in contempt and I agree with the author. I remember the story of the construction of the Northern State Parkway and the way Moses went about it. The ideal routing of the parkway would mean that many wealthy people on the north shore of Long Island would have their land taken or built over. Instead Moses built a winding 2 lane parkway so he wouldn't offend the well to do residents of Nassau county. Instead he took land from the poor and destroyed those who had farmland, paying them a fraction of the land's fair value. Sure, Jones Beach is a nice place to visit by automobile but when it was being constructed poor people didn't own many cars. I tend to judge him overall on how the people of Queens and especially those of the Bronx were treated during the building of his expressways. He ran roughshod over those people he thought didn't have the economic or political power to fight back. Local politicians were bought off or otherwise remained silent while their constituents were being screwed. He was brought down by money and power. Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his brother, David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan Bank, because they had real power, political and bond money and they put him out to pasture. They gave him a figurehead office and title but his era was over. The World's Fair of '64-65 was credited to him, partially, because the Rockefeller brothers didn't want to totally embarrass him but by then he was on borrowed time. My opinion is that he had some great ideas but his way of doing business made him a despicable human being.  My opinion. Carry on.

[Roadcruiser1]

Here is an interesting read on Robert Moses (excuse the font though the article won't let me change it)..........

 

Did Robert Moses Ruin New York City?

By JOAN MARANS DIM  

Thirty-one years after the Master Builder's death, a debate over his legacy rages on.

"Master Builder" Robert Moses, who died in 1981, remains for some the stellar visionary in the building of a culturally and economically vibrant New York City. Others have a different view: Championing the automobile over mass transit, Moses built vehicular bridges, tunnels and roadways that transformed the city, but without any consideration for what might be lost. The result was huge gashes in established, densely populated and mostly working-class neighborhoods.

Moses—perhaps best known from Robert Caro's seminal 1975 biography The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York—showed little concern for the destruction of neighborhoods, or compassion for the thousands of residents displaced by his bulldoze-and-build philosophy. But the sheer breadth of the public works he built is astonishing. His accomplishments in heading a succession of development commissions and authorities from 1924 to 1968 include Lincoln Center, Jones Beach, Shea Stadium, the Central Park Zoo, 658 playgrounds, 13 bridges, 10 giant swimming pools, 416 miles of parkways, towers with 28,400 new apartments, and more than two million acres of parks in the city and surrounding regions, and across New York State.

 

When Moses first gained power, the city's destiny, particularly its economic destiny, was already established. In fact, a long view of New York's economic history reveals that the accomplishments of the metropolis are due to the ideas and efforts of all its residents, and demonstrates that one man, no matter how powerful or misguided, could not control the city's destiny.

 

Long before Moses drew a breath, the city (then only the island of Manhattan) was a place of invention, deal-making and infinite ambition. From Peter Minuit to the stockholders of the New York Stock and Exchange Board, to the Astor trading empire, to the Vanderbilt steamship and railway lines, powerful forces made New York a center of commerce and trade. By 1840, it was the busiest port in America, moving more tonnage than Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans combined.

 

By 1860, the metropolis had more than a half-million people, as an almost endless stream of immigrants was about to arrive to help build the modern city's vast infrastructure. In 1898, New York became the Greater New York of five boroughs and 3.3 million inhabitants, connected by one great bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883.

 

Ten years later, in 1908, Henry Ford's first Model T rolled off the assembly line. By 1910, the next three major East River bridges—the Williamsburg, the Queensboro and the Manhattan–were in place. Like the Brooklyn Bridge, they were built primarily to carry elevated train lines and trolley cars, which were the main form of transportation at the start of the 20th century. Roads and walkways for wagons, carriages and pedestrians were a second consideration.

"The Queensboro Bridge [opened in 1909] was undoubtedly the single most important factor in the creation of the borough (of Queens)…" says Bob Singleton, co-author of Images of America: The Queensboro Bridge. Soon after the bridge opened, new communities took hold and prospered. Farms sprang up and spread eastward, all the way to Long Island's Montauk. The bridge became the critical link in trucking crops from farms to Manhattan's tables. Almost overnight, Queens went from being a nowhere to a thriving commercial somewhere.

Moses knew that making further connections between Manhattan island and the other boroughs would spur economic growth. His goal was to knit the city together; it was how he did it that was perverse.

By 1927, more than 15 million Model Ts had been sold nationwide, and Moses was in his first seat of real power, as president of the Long Island State Park Commission. He began work on his first great public project, Jones Beach. Neither an architect, a planner, a lawyer, or even a politician (he was never elected to public office), Moses was a zealot who built a city for automobiles and those who could afford automobiles. And therein lies Moses' greatest flaw. He cared not a whit for the working stiffs, who didn't need or couldn't afford an automobile. In 1929, when the Second Avenue Subway was proposed, Moses wasn't keen on it. In 1942 and again in 1954, when the city attempted to build that line, Moses prevented funds he controlled from being allocated to the project, preferring instead to spend them on building expressways between his bridges through densely populated neighborhoods in the Bronx and Brooklyn

IMAGINE IF MOSES HAD TEMPERED his actions with consideration of the needs of all the people. Picture the Triborough Bridge (now known as the RFK Bridge, in honor of Robert Kennedy) with a rail system connecting Manhattan to La Guardia and Kennedy airports. Picture a Second Avenue line. When Moses gained power in 1924, New York City had one of the world's most modern subway systems. When he was ousted from power in 1968, it had one of the worst-maintained systems.

 

The tragedy of Robert Moses, who lived to the grand old age of 92, is that his 44-year frenzy of engineering lacked heart. Near the end of his life, he crowed: "I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without removing people, as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs."

 

Moses, with his maze of highways, left an unforgivable stain on New York's landscape. Ride the Cross Bronx Expressway or Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and you'll understand why old timers who once lived in the neighborhoods they afflicted still curse him.

 

Moses was a brilliant but heartless genius, whose monuments are the stuff of dreams, both broken and realized. Lionized at the beginning of his career and vilified at the end, he's now remembered as both builder and wrecker. Either way, he left more of a mark on the city than any other public servant in its history. 

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748704759704577271393988247900.html#text.print

[Grand Concourse]

Robert Moses is a terrible person - the original Interstate System under Eisenhower was not supposed to enter urban areas (most would've terminated at an outer ring road or something, European style), but Moses and other traffic planners convinced him otherwise.

 

It's notable that wherever Robert Moses was commissioned to build viaducts, he built them through thriving black neighborhoods - the Cross Bronx and BQE in New York, the Claibourne in New Orleans, and various other highways around the nation prove this point.

now i see why the expressways are so oddly shaped. Ideally it should been a strait line instead of the zigzag like shape.

[bobtehpanda]

now i see why the expressways are so oddly shaped. Ideally it should been a strait line instead of the zigzag like shape.

 

There's actually one very specific instance of how Moses did not like poor people - before the construction of the BQE, residents in Southern Brooklyn asked to move the routing from Third to Second Avenue, partially to keep their El, and partially because Third was primarily residential at the time, while Second was more industrial. Robert refused, and the BQE was built over the former BMT Third Av Line.

[Grand Concourse]

"The more you know"... thanks!