Last Subway Quotes

“Developing new neighborhoods without rapid transit would be like building a forty-story office tower without an elevator.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Much of the signal system was installed in the 1930s and transit employees now have to fabricate their own replacement parts for obsolete equipment. While subway riders have to rely on this century-old technology, New York's automobile drivers take advantage of traffic signals that are part of a sophisticated information network. Above the streets, the city's Department of Transportation monitors data from sensors and video cameras to identify congestion choke points, and the remotely adjusts computerized traffic signals to optimize the flow of vehicles. Drivers obtain accurate, real-time traffic condition information via electronic signals, computers and smartphones.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“The cost of the first phase was astronomical because of 1) inefficient phasing and high real estate costs, 2) powerful unions earning high wages and dictating costly work rules, and 3) regulations and environmental sensitivities.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Rather than create a city where all residents would be within walking distance of rapid transit services, officials built one where all residents would be within a short drive from a highway.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“In the foreseeable future, New Yorkers are likely to find themselves in familiar territory—waiting for the completion of a new subway line that is too popular to be canceled and too expensive to build. That was the situation when the Second Avenue subway was delayed for several years in 1932. Likewise, in 1944, Fiorello La Guardia told city council members that “the preparation of engineering plans for the construction of the Second Avenue subway has not been interrupted.” In a similar manner, the subway was postponed for further study in 1953. When construction was halted in 1975, Mayor Abe Beame declared, “We cannot abandon the Second Avenue subway; we must, however, defer it.” The following year, when asked whether the line would ever be completed, the MTA chair, David Yunich, responded, ‘‘Well, ‘ever’ is a long time.”57 In 2004, New Yorkers were told that an 8.5-mile Second Avenue subway with sixteen stations would be completed by 2020. Its completion—along with a subway system in a state of good repair—remains decades away.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“So, what should be New York’s highest-priority project? Unfortunately, no objective measure or crystal ball exists to answer that question. Peter Hall’s 1982 book, Great Planning Disasters, reveals the difficulty of trying to assess and compare megaprojects. The author, a world-renowned urban planner, singled out the Sydney Opera House and San Francisco’s BART rail system as planning disasters. The opera house had faced massive cost overruns and its design made it unable to function as a major opera house, while the BART system was attracting far fewer riders than expected. Hall had no idea that these two projects would prove to be wildly successful. The opera house is now Australia’s top tourist destination and the country’s most iconic structure, while BART has become essential to the economic health of the San Francisco Bay Area and the backbone of its transit system. Hall’s effort to determine the success of these two projects after they were built was relatively straightforward compared to a task that requires even more guesswork—assessing projects before they are built, when estimates of both costs and benefits are subject to wide debate and manipulation.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Instead of funding the completion of the Second Avenue subway, billions of dollars may very well be used for other transportation megaprojects in the New York metropolitan area, such as constructing a sorely needed new Hudson River railroad tunnel for New Jersey Transit and Amtrak, replacing the world’s busiest bus terminal at 42nd Street, and improving rail connections to the region’s airports. The MTA still needs to finish the Long Island Rail Road connection to Grand Central Terminal, a project that started along with the Second Avenue subway in the 1960s. Nagaraja, who as president of MTA Capital Construction was once responsible for its construction, referred to this project as “one of the biggest disasters in transit history.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Given the difficulties of working with New York’s regulations, its unions, and the MTA’s bureaucracy, not as many firms bid on the large transit projects in New York compared to other cities, an important factor behind the Second Avenue subway’s high construction costs. News reports have insinuated that the MTA’s bidding process is “rigged” to favor certain contractors who have close ties with MTA officials. This is a costly perception because fewer firms prepare bids for projects when they think the deck is stacked against them.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Cuomo and de Blasio also agreed to cut $3 billion from the capital program and reduce funding for the second phase of the Second Avenue subway from $1.5 billion to $500 million. In October 2015, the MTA board approved a revised capital program. The Second Avenue subway advocates, however, still had some political clout. At a rally on 96th Street, a coalition—including city council members, state legislators, contractors, the Regional Plan Association president, the city comptroller, the Manhattan borough president, environmentalists, and labor unions—urged the MTA to restore the $1 billion that was cut from the project’s second phase. They were afraid the MTA would abandon future phases after it opened the stations at 72nd Street, 86th Street, and 96th Street. Extending the subway to East Harlem had become an issue not only of transportation but of environmental justice, with the funding cut seen as a slap in the face to East Harlem’s predominantly Hispanic community.18 State legislators all across the city understood the need to relieve crowding on the Lexington Avenue line, according to Assemblyman Brennan. He said, “The concept of abandoning the Second Avenue subway, especially for the Manhattan delegation, was not even discussable, not even conceivable.” Even though the mayor had agreed with the governor in private to cut funding for the second phase, de Blasio joined all of Manhattan’s elected officials in criticizing the MTA.19 Behind”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Tendler explained, “NYC Transit had way too much to do with not enough resources, human or financial. I wanted to be equitable across the city and be more sensitive to lower-income communities that were not getting as much attention.” She referred to the Upper East Siders as “whiners” and thought the retailers were exaggerating the impacts on construction. “People don’t go out of their way to do their dry cleaning,” she said. She had a point. Although storefront vacancies on Second Avenue did rise after construction began, the recession also caused a spike in vacancies on First and Third Avenues.55”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“The MTA had become increasingly reliant on borrowing money against its future revenue rather than on funding from the state and city. The State of New York had contributed $1.8 billion for the MTA’s first five-year capital program, but nothing for the 2000–2004 program. Meanwhile, successive mayors cut New York City’s contributions to the MTA’s capital programs. The public did not understand the MTA’s predicament. A citywide survey indicated that most New Yorkers thought the MTA earned a profit on its subway service. In fact, subway riders paid only 44 percent of the authority’s operating costs, with taxes and tolls making up the rest. In 2004, the fastest-growing portion of the MTA’s budget was the interest expenses on its debt. The MTA’s outstanding debt had skyrocketed from $9 billion in the early 1990s to nearly $20 billion by 2004, and its annual interest payments were over $800 million.95”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Gene Russianoff from the Straphangers Campaign said that because New York had not built a new subway line in half a century, subway riders had to deal with “elbow-in-the-ribs crowding that would violate Department of Agriculture guidelines for shipping cattle.” He argued, “If the region can raise $3.5 billion to spare tens of thousands of daily Long Island Rail Road commuters, we must find the resources to come to the rescue of the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers suffering from grossly inadequate subway service on the East Side.” Robert Paaswell, the director of City College’s transportation research center, explained that overcrowding on platforms and stairways causes people to fall and get jammed up as they try to get on and off trains. He warned that the problem could be especially dangerous for the elderly and disabled. Then he brought up a question that had not yet received any attention in the Second Avenue subway discussion: what would happen if an overcrowded Lexington Avenue–line subway station needed to be suddenly evacuated in the event of a terrorist attack?83”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Watching politics is like watching the grass grow. But one day you turn your head and everything has changed.” A”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“The default mode in New York is nothing happens. You need a powerful coalition of interests that politicians and bureaucracies can’t say no to.” When Yaro told Sander that he wanted the coalition to make the Second Avenue subway a priority, Sander initially thought Yaro was joking, because it seemed so far-fetched. Sander was convinced of the project’s viability only after talking with one of his colleagues, Sheldon Fialkoff, who had worked for Bob Olmsted at the MTA.62”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Congress also saw how Ronan and his contemporaries stretched the truth in order to obtain federal funding for their rail projects. In 1989, a US Department of Transportation researcher, Don Pickrell, meticulously compared project sponsors’ initial forecasts with the actual costs and benefits of projects after they were completed. Pickrell found that transit agencies grossly overestimated the number of passengers their proposed rail lines would carry. In fact, nearly all recently built projects were carrying less than half the number of forecasted riders. Likewise, nearly all the projects cost more than expected. Because of this, the 1991 federal transportation law that authorized about $800 million per year for large transit projects mandated a rigorous review process to evaluate the cost effectiveness of proposed projects.16”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“The abandoned Second Avenue tunnels in East Harlem and Chinatown, hidden from the public, did not provide New Yorkers with any benefits. If the Transit Authority had an opportunity to build another subway expansion, it should do so incrementally, so that each segment, once completed, could provide useful services.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Although Cuomo could not get much support in the legislature for changing the MTA’s structure, Ravitch decided to resign anyway. He was frustrated and exhausted after four years of intense pressure in a position that did not pay him anything. He gave Cuomo only an hour’s notice before an August press conference announcing his resignation. The MTA chair did not want to give Cuomo an opportunity to say that he had pushed Ravitch out.78 In his autobiography, published in 2014, Ravitch wrote that both Carey and Koch had staffed their administrations with the highest-quality people they could find and did not try to micromanage them or begrudge them credit. Control, he said, “was not uppermost in their minds.” Ravitch then took a dig at New York State’s fifty-second and fifty-sixth governors (Mario Cuomo and his son, Andrew), saying, “This was not and is not the Cuomo style.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Carol Bellamy, the city council president, who also served on the MTA board, supported Ravitch and publicly feuded with the mayor over the MTA’s capital program. In March, she said, “There is so much posturing. All the characters—the governor, the mayor, the MTA, the comptroller, the legislative leaders, the council president—trying to avoid responsibility, and meanwhile the system collapses around us.” An exasperated Ravitch remarked, “There are always four factors involved in these types of decisions. They are personalities, political interests, geographic and economic interests, and substance. In this case, we have an excess of the first three.”61”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“In March, Koch threatened to stop Westway if the state did not provide funding to protect the fare at the same time that it passed an MTA capital program. That was not an idle threat, since federal officials did not want to be caught in the middle of a local battle. The US Department of Transportation had clearly stated that federal funds for Westway would be awarded only if both state and city officials agreed that it should be built. In response, the governor told reporters that Westway would be built and that he was not planning on meeting with the mayor to discuss the issue. He said, “If the mayor wants to come to a meeting, tell him to bring money.” Deputy Mayor Bobby Wagner pointed out that “traditionally the politics of mass transit brings out the worst in public officials.”60”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“One legislative staffer said about the MTA, “It’s a Catch-22. The service is so bad nobody wants to say give them more money to spend—but if they don’t get more money to spend, service will never get better.” Not only did the assembly and senate need more than two days, but the Democratic leaders in both houses did exactly what Carey had feared would happen: they called on the governor to trade in the federal funds earmarked for Westway to help pay for the MTA’s capital program.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“After the MTA released its $14.4 billion plan in November 1980, a governor’s aide told Ravitch that Carey was not interested in entertaining a fare hike or a tax package for the MTA. Carey preferred holding down the fare rather than financing a multibillion-dollar capital program. The governor also saw Ravitch’s proposal as a threat to Westway. A coalition of thirty-seven civic and environmental groups had filed suit in federal court to stop the highway project. They wanted the state to take the federal transportation funds designated for the project and use them for transit improvements instead. If Carey admitted that the transit system was underfunded and starved for capital, it would have played into the hands of the Westway opponents.48 Faced with resistance in Albany, Ravitch began a lobbying effort that no state official other than Robert Moses at the height of his powers could have undertaken. He started by pleading with the governor and his staff, explaining that without new sources of revenue he would have to dramatically raise the fare. Then he took his case directly to the public. Rather than minimizing the transit system’s problems, Ravitch made sure that reporters learned about all the delays and breakdowns occurring in MTA facilities. He visited editorial boards and told them, “If you don’t pay attention, the politicians won’t.” He talked to every reporter who called. Unlike his predecessors, he admitted that the MTA’s services, particularly during peak hours, were “deteriorating at an accelerated rate.” The newspapers, he said, were “my shield and my sword.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Ravitch was hoping to change the public debate so that the media reported on the transportation network’s long-term needs rather than just its short-term financial woes. That would help him generate support for his plan to restore and then perpetually maintain the MTA’s physical network. Ravitch’s detailed list of needs and financing ideas gave his plan credibility. Now all he had to do was gain approval from the governor, mayor, state assembly, state senate, US House of Representatives, US Senate, and US president. Not exactly a walk in the park.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“While MTA officials were completing the assessment of their needs, they learned that President Carter was not going to be the system’s savior. On November 4, he lost his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan, a California Republican who wanted to slash federal aid to urban areas. Three weeks after the election, the MTA board issued a detailed report proposing a ten-year, $14.4 billion capital program to restore the system to a state of good repair. Most importantly, the board suggested ways to pay for the capital program and new legislation that would streamline the process so that projects could be completed in a more cost-effective and timely manner.44 Ravitch said, “I will not cease for a minute petitioning the government to provide more capital funding. But on the other hand, we should not put our heads in the sand and think that we have fulfilled our responsibilities at the MTA merely by exhorting elected officials to provide funds which, as a practical matter, are simply not available.” That is why Ravitch was prepared for the MTA to take on billions of dollars in new debt to pay for improvements. He suggested increasing the maximum amount of bonds that the MTA’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) could issue, and allowing its bond proceeds to be used for transit improvements, something it had never done before. He also proposed that the MTA be able, for the first time, to issue bonds that would be paid back from future fares.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“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. During the 1970s, East Harlem lost more than 22 percent of its population, and one-quarter of those who remained were on welfare. In seven Bronx census tracts, more than 97 percent of the buildings were either burned down or abandoned, leaving block after block of rubble. On the Lower East Side, where the number of apartments fell by 7.5 percent, a nonprofit environmental group known as the Green Guerillas took over vacant lots and turned them into community gardens.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Caemmerer was an important advocate for improving public transportation in both the city and its suburbs. Growing up, he had taken the Long Island Rail Road to his high school in Manhattan, and as state senator he represented thousands of railroad riders. When Caemmerer first started calling for transit operating subsidies in the 1960s, his Republican colleagues were appalled by what they considered to be his “socialist” position. He emphasized the subway’s importance by referring to it as the second-largest single public investment ever made by Americans, eclipsed only by the Panama Canal.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“New York City’s laudable policies designed to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor were simply not sustainable. On average, residents paid 10.2 percent of their incomes to the city in 1975, more than a third higher than a decade earlier. The city’s elected officials (the mayor, comptroller, borough presidents, and city council members) provided services for its citizens and offered benefits to its municipal workers that the city could not afford.52 Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. set the tone in the 1960s. When submitting his last budget, he said, “I do not propose to permit our fiscal problems to set the limits of our commitments to meet the essential needs of the people of the city.” In Lindsay’s first term as mayor, the city’s labor force grew from 250,000 to 350,000 and the city’s budget rose almost 50 percent. The public university system eliminated all tuition charges and accepted any student with a high school diploma. State officials, including Rockefeller, enabled the city’s profligate spending. At the federal level, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s new programs to eradicate poverty passed along costly mandates to local governments.53”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“In 1974, few people questioned the wisdom of continuing work under Second Avenue. Construction was not facing any organized community opposition, in part because most of the work was taking place in East Harlem, which had fewer people, offices, and shops than the rest of the route. Many of the low-income housing projects that lined the avenue in East Harlem were set back from the street, which gave their residents a buffer from the cut-and-cover construction. The neighborhood was facing much more serious issues than subway construction impacts, including a persistently high unemployment rate, an increasing number of abandoned buildings, and a heroin epidemic.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“A transit advocate, Theodore Kheel, wrote in New York magazine that “for decades, New York City’s subways were neglected by the people who managed them, despised by the people who worked them, and, God knows, unloved by the people who had to use them.” Pointing to the prospects of the Second Avenue subway, gasoline rationing, stricter air quality controls, and more federal mass transportation aid, he claimed, “Thanks to an extraordinary accident of history, a coincidence of forces no one could have foreseen, all that seems now to be changing, literally before our eyes.” Kheel was wrong about the subways having hit rock bottom and gasoline rationing being imminent, but he did predict that New York would beat out Los Angeles and other US cities because “the city with the best public transportation system is going to be the one most likely to thrive in the future.”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“The audio tape from their meeting, stored at Nixon’s presidential library in California, reveals that Nixon gave Rockefeller and Ronan a warm welcome but did not promise to support any additional funding. He did say that the Second Avenue subway would happen only “when the leaders of the city, the establishment if I may pardon the term, get off their butts.” He added that business leaders “can’t just bitch about everything, they’ve got to help run that city. They’ve really got to do it.” Referring to the city’s future, he said, “Unless what we call the business establishment in New York takes a hell of a lot greater interest in sound decent government for the city … it’s had it. It’s going to be finished.”9 Nixon”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City

“Unaware of New York City’s budget shenanigans, taxpayers expected city officials to keep the transit fare low and expand the city’s already generous municipal services. Making matters worse, the city had fewer middle-income taxpayers to pay for rising government expenses. New York City’s loss of manufacturing jobs meant fewer employment opportunities for the low-skilled, poorly educated workers who were attracted to the city. While middle-class taxpayers moved from the city out to the suburbs, the poor people who moved in required more expensive city services. In the early 1970s, the city had more than one million residents receiving welfare benefits, nearly a tenth of the nations’ recipients. More than three-quarters of the city’s welfare recipients had not even been born in New York City. Although the state and federal government paid for three-quarters of the welfare costs, the city’s share created a huge burden on its budget.82”
― Philip Mark Plotch, Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City