The Routes Not Taken by Joseph B. Raskin

Author:Joseph B. Raskin [Raskin, Joseph B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 8-1. The Bronx Home News ran this 1938 photograph of preliminary engineering work on Burke Avenue on March 19, 1946.

Williamson wrote to Lehman in July:

The closing of the railroad December 31, 1937, has caused serious inconvenience to those who founded their homes and established their businesses along its line. If its operation be not renewed, that inconvenience will result in actual reduction in value of the real estate in the zone of the service of the road. Such value falls not alone on the owner of an affected plot, serious though that be; as loss of taxable valuation, it spreads across each of the tax districts involved and so lays a charge across an entire community.… I respectfully suggest to you appoint a committee from all of these municipalities suffering from the discontinuance of the railroad.13

Lehman agreed: “I see no objection … to the appointment by me of an unofficial committee, provided that the Mayors or governing bodies of the municipalities desire it. As you point out, the committee would understand that no funds [were] available for their work from the state, from the county of Westchester or from the city of New York.”14

Moses criticized the Committee in a letter to Garvin:

With the assistance of various City and State executives with whom I have been working on such matters, I offered a reasonable solution of the problem. This was opposed by various people including some cheap political fellows in Westchester and smart aleck lawyers who told the former commuters on this road that they had some magic way of reviving it. The Commission appointed by the Governor on the nomination of various municipalities, was the most ridiculous I have seen in a long time.…

… So far as I am concerned, and speaking for the competent and intelligent engineers of the City and State who worked on this plan, I am getting sick of being the voice crying in the wilderness. I see no other future for your right of way excepting as a toll truck highway.15

Moses had stronger words in a letter to George Mand:

The fact of the matter is that they do not know what they are talking about, and there is no talent on the Regional Plan at the moment worth listening to or bothering about.

If they had any really first-rate men these men would have been absorbed into our big public construction program long ago, and would be earning a living instead of sitting up in an ivory tower drawing pretty pictures and telling busy officials how to do their work.16

Herman W. Johnston wrote to La Guardia for the Allied Civic Associations:

As the representative of the taxpayers along the route of the Westchester and Boston in the Northeast Bronx, the Allied Civic Associations of Old Eastchester protest and stand ready to fight the adoption of any such plan that Commissioner Moses proposes to convert the right-of-way into a toll truck highway.

… The right-of-way of the Westchester and Boston is a natural rapid transit route and its

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