A History of Movement in New York City

Summary

City Journal Audio – "A History of Movement in New York City"

Date: January 17, 2025
Host: Brian Anderson (A), Editor of City Journal
Guest: Nicole Gelinas (B), Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute and Author of Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car

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Overview

In this episode of the 10 Blocks podcast, host Brian Anderson welcomes Nicole Gelinas to discuss her new book, Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car. The conversation offers a nuanced examination of how New York City transformed from a car-dominated metropolis—shaped predominantly by Robert Moses—toward a renewed emphasis on transit, walkability, and urban life. Gelinas and Anderson dissect the cultural, political, and practical forces that altered the city’s trajectory, investigate the legacy of key figures (Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, and grassroots activists), and consider contemporary challenges such as public safety on transit and the introduction of congestion pricing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Genesis of "Movement" and Overcoming the Moses Myth

• Gelinas describes the book as the culmination of decades of research on urban transportation in New York.
• She was motivated by the pervasive belief in the “Robert Moses trap”—the notion that the urban landscape is unchangeable because of Moses’s decisions, despite his long-absence from city power.
• Key Insight: New York’s transit history post-Moses is rich with stories of transformation and citizen action.

  “Moses has been dead for more than 40 years... should we really be acting as if we’re so helpless that we can’t make major changes?” (B, 02:28)

The Moses Era: Genius or Zeitgeist?

• Moses is praised for his administrative genius but is cast as reflecting the will of the city’s elite and population—contrary to the myth of the solitary mastermind.

• His projects (highways, expressways, bridges) were executed because they matched the era’s widespread belief that cars equaled progress.

  “This idea that Moses... had this secret plan to foist upon New York things that elected officials and the press and the populace did not want... just not the case.” (B, 05:41)

• Criticism during Moses’s reign was about speed, not substance—elites often wanted him to act faster.

The Shift Toward Transit and Urbanism

• By the 1960s, it became clear that catering to cars did not stem suburban flight and, in fact, often worsened urban quality of life (pollution, noise, danger).
• Emergence of a new political base (gentrifiers, activists in neighborhoods like Greenwich Village) led to innovative political advocacy against further highway expansion.
• The defeat of projects like the Lower Manhattan Expressway was possible because activists learned to pressure elected officials, not just Moses himself.

The Role of Jane Jacobs and Grassroots Activism

• Jacobs is recognized as pivotal, but she built upon the strategies developed by earlier activists such as Shirley Hayes.
• Victory over the Lower Manhattan Expressway was as much about political expediency—Mayor Lindsay’s need for liberal voters—as about the activism itself.

  “If you want to beat Moses, you don’t put the pressure on Moses. You put the pressure on the elected officials who control Moses.” (B, 11:09)

Lessons for Planners: Balancing Mobility and Livability

• The car has a legitimate place in NYC, but the majority must rely on mass transit for economic and urban health.
• Sustained prosperity is contingent upon effective subways, buses, and safe streets for all users.
• Law and order in traffic (enforcing the rules of the road) is crucial for everyone’s quality of life.

  “If more people tried to come in by private car, you would just have complete gridlock… So… the focus should always be: how do we build a better mass transit system?” (B, 13:43)

Public Safety and the Return to Pre-Covid Ridership

• Ridership has struggled to recover since Covid, correlating strongly with increased crime on subways (43 homicides in five years, compared to one or two a year in previous decades).
• The regression is attributed to both reduced enforcement of minor offenses and a breakdown in public safety mechanisms.

  “We’ve crammed 20 years worth of subway homicides into five years. A massive deterioration in public safety.” (B, 16:51)

Congestion Pricing: Hopes and Caveats

• The introduction of congestion pricing (January 2025) has reduced vehicle traffic in Manhattan by 8%—too early for definitive conclusions.
• Key concerns: Are former drivers shifting to transit or just avoiding the city? Is reduced congestion causing unfamiliar risks? Will new revenue actually address the MTA’s needs given its chronic cost overruns?

  “Just saying, ‘Oh, traffic’s down...’ that’s only a very small part of the whole story.” (B, 19:02)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Moses Myth:
  “It’s like the Wizard of Oz—there’s no there there when it comes to an unelected person forcing a vision of New York that New York otherwise would not have wanted.” (B, 06:41)

• On Grassroots Power:
  “Shirley Hayes... was really the first to crack the code: if you want to beat Moses, you don’t put the pressure on Moses. You put the pressure on the elected officials who control Moses.” (B, 11:09)

• On Public Safety and Transit Recovery:
  “No question that New York has a long way to go with its criminal justice system and with a functional mental health system before we get back to pre-Covid public safety levels on the subway.” (B, 17:45)

• On Congestion Pricing:
  “Congestion pricing is really not going to change people’s day to day commute.” (B, 20:10)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–01:15 – Introduction; Nicole Gelinas’s credentials and the genesis of her book
• 01:15–03:48 – Motivation for writing "Movement," questioning the Moses legacy
• 03:48–06:51 – Moses’s achievements: vision, execution, and the myth of imposition
• 06:51–10:16 – Forces leading to the shift away from the car; the rise of activist politics
• 10:16–12:29 – Jane Jacobs’s true role and the power of coalition-building
• 12:29–14:58 – Lessons for planners; the continued need for balance between cars and transit
• 14:58–17:50 – Public safety, ridership declines, and the legacy of Broken Windows policing
• 17:50–20:22 – Congestion pricing: early signs, remaining questions, and structural funding issues for MTA
• 20:22–21:03 – Conclusion and references to the book’s availability

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Tone & Style

The conversation balances historical rigor with pragmatic considerations for contemporary urban life, blending reflection, analysis, and direct commentary. Gelinas is thoughtful, data-driven, and clear-eyed about the difficulties and trade-offs in New York’s struggle for better mobility.

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For those interested in the dynamic interplay between policy, politics, and city life, this episode provides a comprehensive, engaging primer on the past, present, and likely future of movement in New York City.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign welcome Back to the 10 Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Joining me on the show today is Nicole Jelinas, a friend who's been on many, many times. She's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a longtime contributing editor of City Journal, and a columnist for the New York Post. She writes often on urban economics, infrastructure and finance. Her works appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, L.A. times, other publications. Today, though, we're going to be discussing her new book, Movement, New York's Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car. It's a really important book and thrilled to be able to talk about it. So, Nicole, thanks very much for joining us.

[B]

Likewise, Ryan. Happy New Year to everyone and thanks for having me.

[A]

BETH ON yeah, well, happy New Year. Absolutely. So, you know, I have to say I've been working with you for many years, but Movement is really a monumental achievement. So first, congratulations on the book.

[B]

Thank you, Brian.

[A]

You know, you've been writing about transit in New York for many years now and including in City Journal's pages. And the book is in a lot of ways a culmination of all of those years of work, research and thinking about these important issues. So tell us a bit about your work on the book, how you conceived of the narrative and, you know, maybe what surprised you in doing the research on it.

[B]

Sure, Absolutely. And I also want to say I really appreciate everything that the people at the Manhattan Institute and City Journal have done to support the book, including in the many years of research, research and tree research. So what gave me the idea for the book is that I notice over the years everyone kind of gets stuck in this Robert Moses trap, in that we tend to think we live in the world that Robert Moses built. Moses, starting in the first third of the 20th century in that popular notion was responsible for building the expressways, the parkways, the highways, the large scale public housing that defines New York. And it's sort of, you know, whether it pro transit politicians, anti transit politicians, pro bicycle, anti bicycle, everyone seems to think Moses created this world and there's not a lot we can do about it. We can take some harm reduction steps, you know, narrow a highway or cap a little bit of an expressway, but there's just not very much we can do to change this world. And it just got me to thinking, you know, Moses has been dead for more than 40 years. He hasn't had any power for close to 60 years. So should we really be acting as if we're so helpless that we can't make major changes to something where even if you believe the Moses myth, he hasn't had anything to do with New York State and New York City transportation policy or practice in, well, more than half a century. So something must have happened during that half a century and we should be able to build on that in more drastic ways. So I just thought it would be a good idea to go back and see what has happened since Moses lost power, since the late 1960s. So everything to do with creating bike lanes, creating pedestrian plazas, rebuilding the mta, finding financial resources for the mta, getting crime off of the subways, all these things, you know, from, from the Koch administration through to the Bloomberg administration and beyond, a lot of stories there that just weren't being told.

[A]

Well, you know, there's no question though, as you, you note in the book, that great things, or certainly monumental things, to use that word again, were accomplished under Moses or under his direct influence. So, you know, his regional plan, as you note in movement, resulted in the creation of this kind of car centric environment with four bridges, three tunnels, 11 parkways and expressways. So I wonder, since you do write about Moses in the book, were these achievements predominantly the result of his incredible willpower and effectiveness as a bureaucrat, his authoritarian impulses, or was he really reflecting what was a different attitude more broadly in the city about some of these issues? On urban development, yeah, there's no question.

[B]

That Moses was a bureaucratic genius, a managerial genius. He was a visionary when it came to Jones beach and when it came to system of parks and also, for better or for worse, housing. But on transportation and transit, what he accomplished really reflected what New York City wanted, you know, starting after World War I, not really so much after World War II as is the popular notion, New York, whether it was the business community, elected officials, you know, multiple mayors and governors, the what we now call the mainstream media, you know, New York Times and many, many other outlets, everybody thought the future of the city is the car. If we don't remake the city around people wanting to get around in the private automob, the city is going to lose out to the suburbs. And if you put yourself in these people's minds, it made a lot of sense at the time. So you had the regional plan made up of prominent business people, prominent citizenry, saying we have to build expressways, we have to build highways, we have to build parkways, we have to separate traffic from people walking around and from the buildings. And so this was the blueprint that Moses kind of seized on and he executed it. And for most of this time period, well up until the early 1960s, the elite criticism of Moses, and sometimes often the sort of common man on the street criticism, was that he was too slow in executing these projects. So this idea that Moses, he had this secret plan to foist upon New York things that elected officials and the press and the populace did not want and that they had no choice in the matter, just not the case. He never built anything that was not approved multiple times in multiple for by governors, mayors, other elected officials. And when these people all change their minds, Moses power very quickly melted away. So it's kind of, you know, it's like the wizard of Oz. I mean, there's no there there when it comes to an unelected person forcing a vision of New York that New York otherwise would not have wanted.

[A]

That's really interesting. And you, you alluded earlier that Moses power started dissipating before he was done as bureaucratic reign with conflicts with Jane Jacobs. Famously, you know, since the peak of that Moses era, the city has certainly seen a shift away from the focus on the car and back to an emphasis on walkable neighborhoods, mixed use developments, and an emphasis on transit, at least to some extent. So, you know, what were the forces, maybe we can just mention them briefly, that resulted in that shift in culture, resulted in Moses losing his power?

[B]

Well, I think one of the forces starting in the early 1960s and really becoming much more starkly clear during the 1970s, was the emerging fact that remaking New York around the automobile was not stopping the flight to the suburbs. In fact, in some ways it facilitated the flight to the suburbs. So this idea that you could build parking lots and you wouldn't lose shoppers to the suburbs because they could park just as easily in the city as they could out at a suburban mall, or that you could build wide highways into the core of the city and someone would choose to drive into the city rather than choose to drive to a suburban office park. It was never going to be very easy to drive into and around New York City, no matter how many roads we built and widened. And we started to figure that out in the early 1960s that this wasn't working. But not only that, you were destroying the quality of life for people who wanted to stay in the urban environment, people who weren't attracted to the subways, but were now kind of stuck with the car, generated pollution, noise, danger and so forth. So just sort of realizing all of this highway building was not working as, and was in fact making it worse kind of start to take root in the early 1960s and also decrease creation of a new political base in Manhattan, kind of succeeding the old Tammany hall base. Tammany hall was kind of transactional with regards to the working class voting base. People got some modest social services, they got government jobs, government benefits, and in return, they would vote for the government. Starting in the 1960s, you had what now today we would call gentrifiers moving to Manhattan, moving into places like grunge vill, more affluent and more sophisticated at the political process. And they understood and created a way to fight the political process rather than just find their place in the political process. So, you know, sometimes for good results and sometimes for results we might not agree with. A new base of voters found a way to work against business as usual and doing things like when the city wanted to widen a road through Washington Square park, figured out a way not only to not widen the road, but to get rid of the existing road through the park. It's something you just would not have seen a quarter of a century before, when the people who lived in these areas were basically what they wanted from the government was a job and some early semblance of social services benefits.

[A]

How big a role did Jane Jacobs play in this kind of shift? Or did she just reflect underlying patterns that would have led to a different person taking up that cause?

[B]

Well, she certainly, certainly played an important role. But much like the Moses story is partly the moments created the man as much as the man created the moment. The same thing with Jane Jacobs. She would not have had the same success that she had in the late 1960s at killing the lower Manhattan expressway. That would have, as the name implies, gone across lower Manhattan and destroyed much of Soho and Little Italy. She could not have had that success if she had not learned from the previous generation of activists. A woman named Shirley Hayes, a neighbor of Jane Jacobs in the village in the 1950s, she was the point person on killing the road through Washington Square Park. She was not a sophisticated urbanist. She had gone to college, but had not studied any planning or architecture or transportation field. She had been an off Broadway actress and worked for Voice of America before settling down as a homemaker in the Village. But she was really the first to crack the code that if you want to beat Moses, you don't put the pressure on Moses. You put the pressure on the elected officials who control Moses. So she kept her pressure in the Washington Square park road fight. She kept the pressure on mayor Wagner. She kept it on the Manhattan bar president and got enough tens of thousands of voters together to really represent a credible political threat to these people. And so they capitulated. And a decade later, you know, when Jane Jacobs was fighting Moses, she really wasn't fighting Moses. It was John Lindsay, ultimately, who killed the Lower Manhattan Expressway because he was in a tough reelection fight. And he needed these liberal voters who had been there the first time he ran were very disillusioned with him. He needed to keep them on side to win the second time. And so he canceled the highway. It was really not up to Moses, as nothing unilaterally was up to Moses.

[A]

You know, I wonder what lessons current and future urban planners and city officials can learn from this history of New York City's transportation development. And then more broadly, you know, how important is the transportation situation in the city for New York's economic future and for prosperity? You know, more than most cities, New York really depends on a very robust public transportation system.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one thing to keep in mind is that the goal of the book is, and of pro transit approach in general, is no one wants to get rid of the car. You know, the car has its place in the city. The car even has its place in Manhattan. We all take taxis, we all take for hire services. Many of us have cars and use cars within Manhattan and within the rest of the city. It is just a game of inches where the car has to have a place in the city that is not the dominant mode of transportation or be dominating the physical streetscape. So you'll, for example, 3/4 of people coming into Manhattan come in on some form of mass transit. Only a quarter come in by private car. And if more people tried to come in by private car, you would just have complete gridlock. The people just do not fit on streets of Manhattan. So even if you drive in, certainly you're right, but it helps you immensely that most people do not drive in. So something to keep in mind when it comes to economic growth in the city, if the subway system, commuter rail system, bus system, if they are not working and you cannot get your workforce reliably into Manhattan, the economy of New York City is not doing very well. So it's not so much, you know, we don't want anyone driving in Manhattan, but that we have to keep in mind. The focus should always be how do we build a better mass transit system, and how do we make sure that people who are driving aren't posing a danger to pedestrians, aren't posing a danger to bicyclists, aren't posing a danger to each other? So some of this is just your basic law and order that we have to devise and enforce the laws and the rules of the road that make sure that the car is not harming other people's quality of life.

[A]

One enthusiasm of transit riders. And I think you embrace this view as well as to just encourage people to be using public transportation, subways. But right now, as you've written extensively, people aren't very comfortable taking the subways in New York City. I don't know what the exact ridership numbers are this month, but they're certainly down from where they were pre Covid. And part of that, I think, reflects the concerns over public safety on the subway. So I wonder how that fits into your narrative here.

[B]

Yeah, there's no question that New York has had a hard time rebuilding transit ridership since the COVID lockdowns going on five years ago now. And a big part of that problem is deteriorated public safety. So from 1997 till 2019, we had one or two murders every year on the subway system. And much of that was the work of the former Transit Police Commissioner. Bill Bratton later went to become NYPD commissioner. Twice in the early 1990s, he was in charge of public safety on the subway system. He dispatched the broken windows policing theory that you stop small crimes before they escalate to larger crimes. In a small but not insignificant percentage of cases, you would catch fare beaters, disproportionate share of them would have an outstanding warrant for violent crime, or they'd be carrying a weapon. So by stopping the fair beaters, that's good in and of itself and that you don't want to lose that revenue. But it's also good and that you prevent a fight on the subway where someone pulls out a knife and stabs someone, or you prevent a robbery on the subway, or you keep someone from going in who is going to smoke the crack or opium or an opioid or so forth on a subway car and scare the other passengers off. So that worked very well. We started to lose sight of that in the couple of years leading up to to 2019. And during the COVID lockdowns, it all fell apart. Where We've now had 43 homicides on the subway system in a little less than five years. So we've crammed 20 years worth of subway homicides into five years. A massive deterioration in public safety. Assaults are up, open air, drug use are up, and smaller crimes, which often don't get reported, like someone pushing you on the subway, things that are just Considered misdemeanors or even just violations. These things are also way up. And so this is keeping some elements, you know, 20% or so of our pre Covid ridership off of the subway. No question that New York has a long way to go with its criminal justice system and with a functional mental health system before we get back to pre Covid public safety levels on the subway.

[A]

Well, relatedly, as a final question, we're going to be entering seemingly in a new era of movement in New York with congestion pricing. The introduction of congestion pricing, which has recently happened, for those people who are not from New York who might be listening now, that's a big subject. It's certainly worth its own podcast once this experiment is further along. But briefly, you know, how do you see congestion pricing fitting in with New Yorker's current priorities in 2025 when it comes to transit, and how is the program working so far?

[B]

Well, I think congestion pricing in theory is a good idea. And so far, although it's too early to declare victory, defeat, or something in between, it's certainly working from the perspective of keeping traffic down. According to the MTA, we've lost about 8% of our vehicle traffic into core Manhattan over the first week that it was in Place starting January 5th. But that's not enough to know, is this good or not? We need to know, did those people who stopped driving, did they get on the transit system? If they're just staying home, that's not good for the city's economy. And we also need to know, do fewer cars and trucks on streets of Manhattan, are they creating a public safety problem and that people can drive more quickly? Are we going to see more pedestrian injuries and debts? Again, too early to know. But just saying, oh, traffic's down, as some of the advocates are saying, that's only a very small part of the whole story. You know, there's four or five different metrics you need to look at, and I think another one of those metrics is this by itself does not fix the MTA's myriad problems. You know, congestion pricing was sold for a long time as this is a elixir for all of the MTA's capital investment problems. You're going to have many new subway lines, bus lines, commuter rail lines, even bicycle bridges and so forth if we just implement this program. This is only one of many revenues for the mta. And even with congestion pricing, they already have a deficit problem starting in the next couple of years. You know, their fundamental problem is their costs far exceed inflation in terms of annual growth until they start to get their costs under control, which involves being tougher with the unions, being tougher with construction firms, you know, all sorts of issues. Congestion pricing is really not going to change people's day to day commute.

[A]

Interesting. Well, you can read more of Nicole Jelina's work in this wonderful new book. It's called New York's Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car. It's it's really kind of the definitive book on this subject of transportation in New York. And you can find her work, of course, on the City Journal website. We'll have a link to her author page there in the description. And you can find City Journal on x itijournal and on Instagram ittyjournalmi. If you like what you've heard on today's podcast, please give us a nice rating on itunes. And Nicole, thanks for this insightful discussion and congratulations again on this fascinating new book.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Brian, thanks for joining us for the weekly 10 Blocks podcast featuring urban policy and cultural commentary with City Journal editors, contributors and special guests.