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New York Times contributing opinion writer Nicole Gelinas, who writes regularly on New York City issues, is the author of a deeply researched and informative book, Movement: New York’s Long War to take Back Its Streets from the Car. In this fascinating account, Gelinas cogently argues that NYC’s unwinding of its robust early 20th century streetcar system, followed by decades of relentless effort by the city’s political elites to remake the landscape of the dense urban city to be car friendly, sharply undercut New York's livability and brought the city to its proverbial knees. Unwinding NYC’s car fixation, and restoring a welcoming and functioning transit system – and with it the city’s vitality – has been a 50-year struggle.
A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Gelinas is that most fabled of unicorns (at least in our experience), an ardently pro-transit conservative. Her deep dive into New York’s 20th century car wars offers up some fascinating insights, not just about New York, but about blue cities generally.
In this episode, we tease lessons from the grassroots political organizing in Greenwich Village, led by housewife Shirley Hayes, that in the 1950s stopped a Robert Moses road that would have split Washington Square Park, and how that decade-long battle raised the consciousness of a young Jane Jacobs. And we go deep with Gelinas on why transit is so central to the health of dense urban environments, and why, given that reality, so many urban electeds and residents continue to worship at the altar of the automobile.
We also talk about how important it is that transit systems are well run and welcoming. In particular, we discuss the wave of crime that beset the New York’s subway system in the 1970s and ‘80s, and how a young transit police chief named William Bratton, appointed in 1990, got a handle on subway crime by putting an emphasis on apprehending fare evaders. Bratton's “broken windows” approach worked, sharply reducing subway crime – a lesson forgotten by blue cities in the 2010s, when the curtailment of fare enforcement efforts sparked a new wave of transit crime and disorder, which again began to drive riders away. And we close with a discussion of why Trump’s move to send the National Guard to police blue cities won’t work.
Our editor is Quinn Waller.
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