S is for Subways and Separation
Photo: Rizzuto, Angelo, 1906-1967, photographer
In a place where constant movement is inevitable, New York thrives on its accessible transportation. There’s cars, buses, trains, subways. Most of New York, at least the parts closest to the city, are easily walkable. What about when you go off to a different state? Sure you can take a train but it’s just easier to take a plane. At the same time, you need a car to get to the airport and what if that’s not something you have at the moment or even at all? How could you get there?
If you look on a map, there’s no train that will take you directly to the airport. Tiktoker Alex French documented her experience making the commute to John F. Kennedy Airport with all of her luggage in tow. In total, it took about an hour and a half from the West Village. While that may not seem like the worst to some, it is important to note that she had a considerably light load which some may not be so lucky to experience. Why is it drastically easier to make the trip by car than by subway?
From Carrying Mail to Carrying People
The man behind the subway system is none other than Alfred Ely Beach. Although he was the editor for Scientific American magazine, Beach had a deep love for inventions. His sights had been set on the pneumatic tube, a tool that he solely envisioned for the purpose of transporting mail in the downtown areas. However, in the 1860s, after tinkering with a cable railway, he expanded it to a pneumatic train network. Although he was granted a charter in 1868 for a 4-foot (1.2-meter) pneumatic tube to test mail delivery, he instead built an 8-foot (2.4-meter) tunnel 300 feet (100 meters) under Broadway, between the streets of Warren and Murray. The demo was successful but efforts were stopped partly due to the opposition from political boss William Magear Tweed and by the growing use of electric traction. In the 1960s, the plans were brought back and revised to be a gravity-vacuum train for “long-distance high-speed transportation’’.
With the idea being approved, the only, or rather the biggest issue, came down to placement.
The White Man Making His Burden Ours (switch that)
If you’ve ever found yourself in New York, you’ve probably heard of the Robert Moses Causeway. While it is a bridge that connects Long Island to Fire Island, the person behind it is both influential and controversial.
Born on December 18, 1888 to department store owner, Emanuel Moses, and his wife Bella Silverman Moses, Robert Moses lived in New Haven, Connecticut, before relocating to Manhattan, New York. He was accepted into Yale University at 17 years old and graduated from the institution in 1909. He then went on to receive his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1914. Just a year prior, he began working under the Municipal Research Bureau, an experiment and military advisory for the “nationwide municipal government reform movement”. The year 1922 was when Moses took part in building different parks and highways. He has an extensive rap sheet detailing all of his greatest works. He helped build highways, bridges, parkways, playgrounds, housing, tunnels, zoos, civic centers, exhibition halls, and from 1964 to 1965 the New York World’s Fair. In total, he was responsible for 658 parks, 416 miles of parkways, and 13 bridges.
Moses is the person who transformed New York into a hub of movement and made it into the buzzing city and state that it is known for today.
It wouldn’t be right however, to highlight all the good he has done while simultaneously pushing aside the bad. It seems since the dawn of time that people of color have received the short end of the stick over and over again. Starting from when Ellis Island began opening its doors to immigrants in 1892. This was a place where, once cleared and let through, new beginnings commenced. People fled their homes in hopes to create something new for themselves, their family, and for those who would come after them. They were subjected to long work hours, no union to ensure they were cared for, very little pay, and ended their days in similarly conditioned homes. If you were to ask someone why they put themselves through this grueling cycle, they’d tell you that it was all so they could live out the American dream.
With the playing field being difficult enough for the underdogs, urban planners and elites alike made things worse by bringing about gentrification to these areas. Urban planning was meant to be about furthering the health, safety, and “economic-well being” of all of its citizens but as it stands, it has only been serving a small group of elites while the rest suffer from displacement. Moses himself took part in the Cross Bronx Expressway. Noted for being the most complex to execute and most expensive per mile in the entire world, the project was one that kicked many, specifically minorities, out of their homes. Besides the lack of morality behind the banishment, the Cross Bronx Expressway was due to receive 90% of the federal matching funds, especially after the Interstate Highway Act of 1956.
In his work “The Power Broker”, Robert Caro criticised Moses by noting that he was “disemboweling a dozen communities along the route”. It is said that anywhere between 40,000 to 60,000 people were put out of their residences to the project. The areas that he had bulldozed were ones the embodiment of the melting pot America claims that it is. People of Jewish Eastern European, Puerto Rican, African-American, Irish, and Italian descent intermingled with one another. All of that was subsequently destroyed thanks to Moses and his team.
Like all things in New York, the problem with not having a subway system that directly leads to airports, we can once again thank Robert Moses. Keeping in mind the high price of a plane ticket, Moses understood that most who flew were privileged: white and rich. With New York being riddled with immigrants aiming to live an honest life, Moses found joy in creating plans that separated the poor from the rich — black from the white. Most who commuted via subway were citizens from lower income communities. The idea that an immigrant could save up money to make a trip through the air was unimaginable. Moses felt that people of color were not worthy of reaping the same luxuries as their white counterparts. Thus, he aimed to make things harder for them if they dared try.
Besides taking away what was rightfully theirs, Moses made sure that once black and brown people were able to build themselves up again long after his passing that his racism inconvenienced us in the decades that followed. So next time you booked your flight and think about how difficult it is just to get the airport, remember to say f*ck you to Robert Moses.