The importance of the Lower Manhattan Expressway battle to the Westway saga is that antiWestway activists could represent the proposal as the return of the old monster they had already slain. Never mind that Westway's design was an attempt to avoid the neighborhoodsmashing ot Robert Moses; the reform movement's collective memory requires the scenario that the same vampire arise anew in each succeeding generation. So when Jane Jacobs, by now living in Toronto, was interviewed by New York magazine in 1978 about Westway, she attacked it not only on the basis that it was the second coming of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, г q n A R D OR THE BATTLE OF WESTWAY 93 Q U T D U " " ' but that it was the third coming of the New York Regional Pla Committee's 1929 report, with its proposed crosstown expressways tn versing Manhattan. "Westway is only one small piece of a plan that woulc piece by piece, Los Angelesize New York. It's an old plan that dates bac to 1929." The advantage of a historical perspective is that an informe skeptic such as Jacobs can be appropriately on guard when newfangle ideas are proposed. The disadvantage is that one may be tempted to figl the old battles, ignoring important distinctions. "If Westway goes in, th Lower Manhattan Expressway will be revived," she told her interview! confidently, though such an outcome, decimating Greenwich Village an Soho, would have been extremely unlikely. Meanwhile, Robert Moses, the chief advocate of the Lower Manhatta Expressway, now in semiretirement, issued a paper calling the Westws proposal a "fiasco," saying it would be too expensive, thereby incurring th resentment of Western and Southern congressmen, and that the bettt way was to repair the collapsed elevated roadway. "How much longer ca such a shindig go on? Five years? Ten years? This is not orderly considei ation. It is a mob dividing up stage money, an Anvil Chorus, a byword, hissing and a yapping, a spectacle of bamboozlement. If this is the road t progress, I am the retired Gaekwar of Baroda," Moses concluded coloi fully. For once, Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses were in agreement. Bot hated Westway. But look who was for Westway: three United States presidents (Geral Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan) and every New York senator, govei nor, and mayor who served during its placement on the table (includin such nationally recognized figures as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jaco Javits, Nelson Rockefeller, Hugh Carey, Mario Cuomo John Lindsay, an Ed Koch), every construction and civil service union, the banks and bus: ness community, the three local daily newspapers, leading architectur; critics (Ada Louise Huxtable, Paul Goldberger, Peter Blake), and variot civic watchdog groups (Municipal Art Society, Citizens Housing an Planning Council)-all pressing to see this oddly visionary schem become a reality. The Westway team was spearheaded by an undersecrc tary type with Washington influence (Lowell Bridwell), while able fixei like John Zuccotti, Abe Beame's deputy mayor, were working behind tt scenes.