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Last Subway is the fascinating and dramatic story behind New York
City's struggle to build a new subway line under Second Avenue and
improve transit services all across the city. With his
extraordinary access to powerful players and internal documents,
Philip Mark Plotch reveals why the city's subway system, once the
best in the world, is now too often unreliable, overcrowded, and
uncomfortable. He explains how a series of uninformed and
self-serving elected officials have fostered false expectations
about the city's ability to adequately maintain and significantly
expand its transit system. Since the 1920s, New Yorkers have been
promised a Second Avenue subway. When the first of four planned
phases opened on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 2017, subway
service improved for tens of thousands of people. Riders have been
delighted with the clean, quiet, and spacious new stations. Yet
these types of accomplishments will not be repeated unless New
Yorkers learn from their century-long struggle. Last Subway offers
valuable lessons in how governments can overcome political gridlock
and enormous obstacles to build grand projects. However, it is also
a cautionary tale for cities. Plotch reveals how false promises,
redirected funds and political ambitions have derailed subway
improvements. Given the ridiculously high cost of building new
subways in New York and their lengthy construction period, the
Second Avenue subway (if it is ever completed) will be the last
subway built in New York for generations to come.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has morphed in ways
that would be unrecognizable to its founders. Its mission evolved
from improving rail freight to building motor vehicle crossings,
airports, office towers, and industrial parks and taking control of
a failing commuter rail line. In its early years, the agency was
often viewed with admiration; however as it drew up plans,
negotiated to take control of airfields and marine terminals, and
constructed large bridges and tunnels, the Port Authority became
the object of less favorable attention. It was attacked as a
“super-government” that must be reined in, while the mayors of
New York and Newark argued that it should be broken up with its
pieces given to local governments for their own use.Despite its
criticisms and travails, for over half a century the Port Authority
overcame hurdles that had frustrated other public and private
efforts, built the world's longest suspension bridge, and took a
leading role in creating an organization to reduce traffic delays
in the New York-New Jersey region. How did the Port Authority
achieve these successes? And what lessons does its history offer to
other cities and regions in the United States and beyond? In a time
when public agencies are often condemned as inefficient and
corrupt, this history should provide some positive lessons for
governmental officials and social reformers. In 2021, the Port
Authority marked its 100th birthday. Its history reveals a struggle
between the public and private sectors, the challenges of balancing
democratic accountability and efficiency, and the tension between
regional and local needs. From selected Port Authority successes
and failures, Philip Mark Plotch and Jen Nelles produce a
significant and engaging account of a powerful governmental entity
that offers durable lessons on collaboration, leadership, and the
challenge of overcoming complex political challenges in modern
America.
The State of New York is now building one of the world's longest,
widest, and most expensive bridges - the new Tappan Zee Bridge -
stretching more than three miles across the Hudson River,
approximately thirteen miles north of New York City. In Politics
Across the Hudson, urban planner Philip Plotch offers a
behind-the-scenes look at three decades of contentious planning and
politics centered around this bridge. He reveals valuable lessons
for those trying to tackle complex public policies while also
confirming our worst fears about government dysfunction. Drawing on
his extensive experience planning megaprojects, interviews with
more than a hundred key figures - including governors, agency
heads, engineers, civic advocates, and business leaders - and
extraordinary access to internal government records, Plotch tells a
compelling story of high-stakes battles between powerful players in
the public, private, and civic sectors. He reveals how state
officials abandoned viable options, squandered hundreds of millions
of dollars, forfeited more than three billion dollars in federal
funds, and missed out on important opportunities. Faced with the
public's unrealistic expectations, no one could identify a
practical solution to a vexing problem, a dilemma that led three
governors to study various alternatives rather than disappoint key
constituencies. ,br>Politics Across the Hudson continues where
Robert Caro's The Power Broker left off and illuminates the power
struggles involved in building New York's first major new bridge
since the Robert Moses era. Plotch describes how one governor,
Andrew Cuomo, shrewdly overcame the seemingly insurmountable
obstacles of onerous environmental regulations, vehement community
opposition, insufficient funding, interagency battles, and overly
optimistic expectations.
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