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To the city government, the collapse of one highway section only increased the urgency to construct Westway or some other replacement road. But some citizens, especially those without cars, began to entertain the thought that maybe the metropolis could get along without new highways. A species of Luddite fantasy arose from deep within the bohemian subconscious of New Yorkers: a perpetual pedestrian bein. The opposition to the Vietnam War had made any large government construction project suspect. Interstate highways seemed a domestic form of pacification, and cars were junior tanks, aggressive, lethal, spreading air pollution. Why should society's limited resources be squandered on that pampered convenience?
BY 1974 THE WEST SIDE HIGHWAY PROJECT (WSHP) had produced a final Westway design. Here was Whitaker's vision: start with the Downtown tunnel piece, from 59th Street to the Battery, and hook it up with the BrooklynBattery Tunnel at the bottom of Manhattan. Once that part had been built, and everyone saw how well it worked, with the barrierhighway removed and a generoussized park giving the public easy access to the water, you could extend the submerged tube all the way north, to the George Washington Bridge, thereby freeing Riverside Park entirely of the highway that now mars some of its most beautiful waterside walking paths.
It was a clear, lucid vision, muddied at every turn by politics.
The first occlusion involved a territorial squabble: the head of the Battery Park City Authority, a Governor Rockefeller appointee, was threatened by Ed Logue's infringing on his domain by proposing to run the tunnel underwater along Battery Park City's edge. (This was during the period when BPC still sat unbuilt, a tract of sand and mud.) He insisted that Westway
on OR THE BATTLE OF WESTWAY 91
OUTBOARD,
'nlandznA aboveground with a tenlane BrooklynBattery Tunne conne wj1jcj1 meant it would need to surface somewhere south of Cana entran enough altitude, and run at street level for the last mile о trC„or whatever reason-cronyism, political blackmail-Rockefelle S0" ded to this stupid demand, which in effect doomed Battery Park Cit 'solation by a moatlike highway. This last section of construction, run
it would through Manhattan's streets, also greatly increase! nmg as ii °
Westway's costs, absorbing almost 40 percent of the highway's propose budget.
Meanwhile, the Upper West Side community was nervous abou Westway, fearing it was a Trojan horse that would gallop throug Riverside Park. The district's state assemblyman, Albert Blumentha sponsored legislation that made it virtually impossible to disturb even blade of grass in Riverside Park, for highway construction or any othe purpose. The Westway team had no problem with that, since they ha planned all along to build the northern extension of the highway undei water. Assemblyman Blumenthal, now reassured that Riverside Park wa in no danger, became an enthusiastic supporter of Westway.