' We should have just called it the who came up X nnel People would have understood it better." It was not as if New Yorkers were unfamiliar with underwater tubes: had lived for decades with the Holland and Hudson Tunnels, joining Manhattan with New Jersey, and the BrooklynBattery Tunnel, running nder the East River between Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. The only difference was that this particular tunnel would hug the western shore of the island, rather than connecting two landmasses. Certainly such a submerged tunnel, which would take an estimated ten years to construct, would not come cheap: the budget was projected for over a billion dollars, which would make it, foot for foot, the most expensive highway ever built. But the beauty part was that it would cost the city nothing. The Federal Highway Fund would pay for 90 percent, and the state would kick in the remaining 10 percent. Westway was to run 4.2 miles from the Battery to 42nd Street, in the form of two tubes of three lanes each, plus a shoulder lane on each side. It would be considered part of the interstate highway system. If you wanted the Highway Trust Fund to fork over the money, you had to propose a highspeed interstate expressway. The irony is that the New York City Department of Transportation didn't particularly want a highspeed expressway. The transportation field's philosophy was shifting, from moving cars rapidly through and out of the city, to discouraging highspeed corridors in urban settings. As it was, the rushhour speed on Westway was projected at only twenty miles per hour. But it still had to be presented as an interstate highway" (largely a semantic issue) because that way the Feds would pick up 90 percent of the costs, whereas if it were for any other kind of road, federal funds would only pay 65 percent. Being a federal highway also meant that it would take trucks (a plus, removing trucks from the streets). But the very word interstate aroused the public's mistrust, jjjerstandably, as interstate highways had had a bad record nationwide of ozing through neighborhoods and increasing pollution. In fact, in "What' ' ay to the end, a name? The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York's intellectual senator, who loved W, said, "If only we had called it 'the Hudson Marshes.'" THE WEST 1977 federal legislation was enacted to prevent interstates from passim through inner cities; however, Westway, being in a tunnel, would still qUa ify for federal highway monies. One of the knocks on Westway was that it was put together to maxj mize drawing federal funds into the city. Merely because the money js available to us, argued critics, doesn't mean we have to take it, if the project is no good. We could "just say no." On the other hand, if one believed the project was worthy, why not take advantage of a federal cash stream) In a sense this was payback, since New York City had historically given much more in taxes to Washington than it had received back in services Part of what made the Westway plan so costly was that it offered far more than just a highway, encompassing a park and commercial and residential development as well.