Last Subway

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
East Side ◽  
Transit System ◽  
Construction Period ◽  
Transit Services ◽  
Subway System ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This book 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. The book reveals why the city's subway system, once the best in the world, is now too often unreliable, overcrowded, and uncomfortable. It 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. The book 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. It 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.

From a Compact City into a Metropolis

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 10-26
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
Construction Costs ◽  
Transit System ◽  
Population Spread ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
Subway System ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This chapter discusses how the creation of an urban transportation system transformed New York City. After private railroad companies built tracks for elevated railroads (Els) above the city's streets in the 1870s, the city's population spread out and grew rapidly from Lower Manhattan. To continue growing, however, the city had to build electric-powered rail lines, underground, that would travel faster and further and would accommodate even more people than the Els. Thus, the City of New York paid the construction costs for its first subway and in 1900 entered into a long-term lease with the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) to build and operate it. In 1913, the City of New York entered into contracts with two companies—the IRT and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT)—to build more lines in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. However, in the early twentieth century, New York's politicians took a shortsighted approach to the transit system. Instead of raising fares, they raised false expectations that New Yorkers could have high-quality subway service with low fares. The repercussions would last for generations. The chapter then looks at the establishment of the Office of Transit Construction Commissioner, the construction of a city-owned and city-operated “Independent” (IND) subway system, and the planning for a Second Avenue subway.

The Mysterious Victory of the Newsboys: The Grand Duke Theatre's 1874 Challenge to the Theatre Licensing Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-80
Author(s):  
Michelle Granshaw
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Juvenile Delinquents ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Financial Power ◽  
House Of Refuge ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers ◽  
Legal Battle

In 1874, a group of newsboys took on some of the wealthiest, most respected, and most powerful New Yorkers and emerged victorious. The Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, a philanthropic organization that worked to guard public morals and championed Christian values, faced two challenges that year over the city's theatre licensing fee. Its prominent members and their financial power made the organization a formidable force in local city matters. As a result of the 1872 Act to Regulate Places of Public Amusement in the City of New York, theatre managers were required to pay $500 to the city for an operating license. The city gave the fees to the society, which it used to operate the city's House of Refuge. The society believed that theatres corrupted the city's youth and that, therefore, the theatres should help fund youth reform efforts. In its legal proceedings against theatres without licenses, the society typically targeted cheap entertainment establishments in poor neighborhoods. These playhouses “werenotparticularly powerful and presumably would not put up too strenuous a legal battle.”

The Billionaire’s Ambitions

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
York City ◽  
Transportation Network ◽  
East Side ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
Transportation Agencies ◽  
The City ◽  
Grand Vision

This chapter assesses the roles played by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and New York City mayor John Lindsay, as well as William Ronan, in transforming the transportation system. Ronan, Rockefeller, and Lindsay all realized that improving public transportation was critical to strengthening the economy of the city and the region. They were also well aware of the benefits of a Second Avenue subway, since all three of them lived on the Upper East Side. After Lindsay failed to reorganize the transportation agencies, Rockefeller and Ronan developed their own grand vision for the region's transportation network, and in December of 1966, Ronan stepped down from his post as secretary to begin implementing their plan. At the beginning of the state's 1967 legislative session, Rockefeller and Ronan announced their two-pronged approach. First, they proposed integrating the New York City Transit Authority and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) into the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority (MCTA). In addition, Rockefeller and Ronan would seek voter approval to borrow $2.5 billion that would be dedicated for roadway and public transportation improvements across the state. In 1967, the governor and Ronan obtained the support they needed to transform the transportation network, a feat that Lindsay had not been able to accomplish.

Conditional morphology in New York heritage Spanish: General and variable usage patterns

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 429-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Martillo Viner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
External Variables ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

Abstract This paper analyzes the use of conditional morphology by second-generation Spanish speaking New Yorkers. We consider both overall usage patterns and variation, the latter exclusively in the apodosis of hypothetical utterances where three forms occur: the conditional, the subjunctive, and the indicative. The data are from semi-controlled sociolinguistic interviews with 26 Spanish-English second-generation bilingual participants from New York City. The participants stem from the six largest Spanish-speaking national origins in the city: Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Mexican, Colombian, and Ecuadorian. The findings show that conditional morphology is active in the grammars of these bilinguals, but variation does manifest between the three aforementioned forms in the apodosis. Furthermore, three of the 10 external variables identified for the investigation are found to be statistically significant in the cohort: level of English skill, level of education, and areal origin.

Saving the Subway

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 96-123
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
York City ◽  
Operating Costs ◽  
Budget Cuts ◽  
The World ◽  
Downward Spiral ◽  
Subway System ◽  
The City

This chapter describes how, in the 1970s, the New York City subway system continued the downward spiral of fewer riders, budget cuts, and reduced service, which led to a loss of more riders, further budget cuts, and even worse service. Despite carrying fewer passengers, the transit system's operating costs kept increasing. David Yunich's successor at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Harold Fisher, failed to address the MTA's slide, although he claimed that his programs were making public transportation travel more efficient, comfortable, and safe. By 1980, New York City's subway riders had more to complain about than ever before. New York City's subway system was not just unreliable, crowded, and filthy; it was also the most dangerous in the world. Moreover, the ongoing deterioration of the subways was threatening the city's economy. The chapter then focuses on the role of house developer Richard Ravitch as MTA chair. Ravitch had no interest in restarting the Second Avenue subway, and the project was a low priority for many of the communities it would serve. Instead, under Ravitch's leadership, the MTA took care of the abandoned tunnels below Second Avenue. More importantly for the future of the neighborhoods that the Second Avenue subway had been designed to serve, Ravitch rescued the existing subway system and the city along with it.

“Give This Man Work!”

2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-246
Author(s):  
Joan Waugh
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
East Side ◽  
Welfare History ◽  
Charity Organization ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Many ◽  
Social Welfare History ◽  
The City ◽  
Work Relief

“Give This Man Work if you would keep his wife and children alive; one child has already died from starvation,” wrote a concerned citizen to the East Side Relief Committee (Devins 1905: 322). The East Side Relief Committee was a special work-relief unit set up in 1893 by Josephine Shaw Lowell, the founder in 1882 of the Charity Organization Society (COS) of the City of New York (COSCNY) to combat the effects of the depression. That industrial depression in the early 1890s resulted in major unemployment and much suffering among the city's working class.The imperative of the letter (“Give This ManWork!”) illuminates the COS's policy toward relief before, during, and after the depression of 1893, a landmark date in social welfare history. Earlier, Lowell and the COS were best known for their concerns about the role that “indiscriminate” relief played in harming the moral character of the recipients and undermining the living standards of employed workers, not how it could be used to ameliorate joblessness. “I believe that among the many causes of poverty,” Lowell asserted in a speech, “one of the most potent is careless relief-giving, whether by what are called charitable societies, by private individuals,or from public funds” (quoted in Stewart 1974 [1911]: 216).

New York and the Origin of the Skyline: The Visual City as Text

Prospects ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 225-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
The North ◽  
Major Period ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Skyline View ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

How do we visualize our large cities? What kinds of shapes, overall, do we imagine them to have? These questions would have brought different answers in each major period of urban change in our country's development. Each period seemed to develop a favored perspective. Eighteenth and early-19th-century New Yorkers thought of the city as it looked when one approached it by sea from the harbor. Mid-19th-century viewers imagined a city seen from a bird's eye view like that provided by the Latting Observatory on 42nd Street, stretching to the north. By the end of the century, the approach to the city by rail and road began to encourage a new perspective on the city, silhouetted against the skywhat we have come to know as the skyline view. Each of these perspectives on the city reflects something about the urban culture of the period that created and favored the perspective. In the values and meaning that have become associated with it, the skyline is no exception.

scholarly journals SIGNS OF CHANGE: THE RENAMING OF DURBAN’S STREETS Democratic Alliance v eThekwini Municipality: Unreported Judgment (KZD) Case Numbers 10787/08 and 6608/07 Judgment delivered: 3 June 2010

Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vishal Surbun
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Central Business District ◽  
Metropolitan Region ◽  
The Public ◽  
To Come ◽  
Business District ◽  
The City ◽  
Inkatha Freedom Party ◽  
Che Guevara

On 27 February 2007, the council of the eThekwini Municipality, the governing entity of the Durban and surrounding metropolitan region, passed the first of two resolutions in terms whereof certain byways and landmarks would be renamed. In a public municipal advertisement, the City’s mayor announced: “The street renaming is indeed an ultimate step towards honouring all the heroes and heroines who fought a fight for a good cause. Chief among these are those who in the pursuit of freedom ventured their way through the troubled bridges of apartheid. Therefore as eThekwini council, we feel honoured to be part of such a historic process of ensuring that names of these great men and women of the struggle remain known even to the generations to come … It is indeed a democratic process: members of the public were consulted and given an opportunity to suggest names. This will ensure that the city we live in is indeed accurately reflecting its people and its history …” Notwithstanding these sentiments, on 1 May 2007, about 10 000 demonstrators marched through the city’s central business district and converged on the City Hall, where the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) held a joint protest to complain, not about the fact that the streets and landmarks were being renamed, but about the new names themselves. The suggested names of SWAPO, Griffiths Mxenge, Andrew Zondo and Che Guevara spawned a public outcry and accusations that the process was carried out without proper consultation. The controversy prompted the New York Times to observe that “Durban is different. Intentional or not, some of the proposed name changes clearly flick at scabs covering deep divisions”. Against this background, the DA and the IFP launched an application in the public interest in the Durban High Court which will be analyzed hereunder. The Applicants prayed for an order to the effect that the decision by the Municipality to rename the streets must be set aside and for the old names to be restored. A representative for the DA announced that:“We took this case to court because we believed, and still do believe that the rights and opinions of thousands of eThekwini’s citizens were trampled by the actions of the municipality who simply roughshod over their objections”.

An Empty Promise

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
New York State ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
System P ◽  
Subway System ◽  
The City

This chapter examines how parks commissioner Robert Moses had been a powerful player in Fiorello La Guardia's administration and a dominant force under William O'Dwyer. Moses simultaneously held multiple public-sector positions that gave him enormous power over public works projects in the New York metropolitan area. During the four years and eight months of the O'Dwyer administration, O'Dwyer and Moses convinced New Yorkers, the media, and even state legislators that the city would soon begin building a Second Avenue subway. However, New York City was in a precarious financial situation. Not only was New York City getting less federal aid, but it was also reaching the maximum amount of money it could borrow, a level defined in the New York State constitution. To generate support for raising fares and building the new subway, O'Dwyer's team lied, claiming the Second Avenue subway would be self-sufficient and that the fare increase would create a financially sustainable and growing subway system. In 1950 and 1951, the state legislature authorized a constitutional amendment that would allow the city to borrow an additional $500 million over and beyond its constitutional debt limit. After the amendment passed, city officials knew that the city could not afford to proceed with the Second Avenue subway. By 1953, the city's business leaders and their allies in the state capital had lost faith in the city's ability to manage the transit system.

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