THE TRIBOROUGH BRIDGE: ROBERT MOSES AND THE AUTOMOBILE AGE
Exhibition continues through 2008
New York Transit Museum, Brooklyn Heights

Robert Moses has become a mythic figure in the public memory. To some he was a man who could get things done, building bridges, beaches, playgrounds and parks. To others he was the destroyer of neighborhoods evicting families and bulldozing homes to make way for highways. Nearly four decades have passed since the Moses reign came to an end yet his name is still frequently invoked in urban planning debate. Mega projects like the Atlantic Yards, ideas that can’t get off the drawing board like Brooklyn Bridge Park, and the slow progress of the rebuilding efforts at the World Trade Center site are compared and contrasted to his legacy. Historians have become interested in re-evaluating him with several new museum exhibitions taking on the subject. “Robert Moses and the Modern City,” is being presented by the Museum of the City of New York, Columbia University and the Queens Museum of Art. Further insight into Robert Moses relating to his role in regional transportation can be found at the New York Transit Museum. The Triborough Bridge: Robert Moses and the Automobile Age was organized to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the Triborough Bridge in collaboration with MTA Bridges and Tunnels Special Archives.

Under the direction of Robert Moses the Triborough Bridge Authority evolved into the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, which has built every major vehicular bridge and tunnel within the city since 1936. He ran the Authority from 1934 until 1968, during which time he also headed the agencies that built most of the traffic arteries that these bridges and tunnels link. In 1968 Moses was ousted from his position when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, created by Governor Nelson Rockefeller, absorbed the Triborough Authority allowing lucrative bridge tolls to help subsidize the city’s public transportation.

As for the idea that he was only carrying out pre-existing plans, every city has filing cabinets full of big plans. The question is which plan gets carried out.

If experience is any guide Moses also used illegal tactics to get what he wanted. That’s what the highway builders did in my state.

“Fitch, however, believes that the bureaucratic arrogance of Moses made it easy for critics such as Caro to exaggerate the importance of New York’s master builder in reshaping the metropolitan area. “The scapegoat for two decades of planning failures,” he “simply poured the concrete on the dotted lines” of the earlier plans.”

Fitch points out that almost all the changes that Moses made were outlined in the 1929 and 1968 Regional Plans, put out by those folks at the Regional Plan Association who are now our friends and in favor of transit.

That critique is valid, but limited. Moses was a “great man,” because he accomplished so much, against the resistance of many elected officials and in violation of democratic principles. Without him, the Rockefellers might only have been able to build half as many highways.

P.S. New York’s public housing is notably better than any other high rise public housing in the nation.

Somehow, people manage to do it, even though Moses’ cross-manhattan expressways were stopped, just as people manage to travel between the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge even though the Embarcadero Freeway was stopped.

Jackson goes further in celebrating Moses than the exhibits themselves.

For example, he has said that Moses housing projects made New York a better place. (Does he think New York would be even better if Moses had succeeded in demolishing West Greenwich Village and replacing it with a housing project?)

He has even defended the Cross-Bronx Expressway: “How do you travel between Boston and Pittsburg without the Cross Bronx Expressway? You have to move laterally at some point.” (quoted in _Columbia_ magazine, Winter 2006-2007, p. 37).