It was easy for antiWestway groups to put a single label on this broad spectrum of agreement: the Establishment. Formidable official pressure was being brought to bear to get this project built, making the end result doubly surprising. ALBERT BUTZEL, the attorney who may have done more than anyone else to defeat Westway, acknowledges today that the project was designed in such a way as to avoid controversy. "Nobody had anything against Westway's being on landfill back then, it looked like a winwin solution. In fact, the genius of the Westway proposal was that it didn't tear down anyone's house. I even thought the tunnel was a pretty good idea," admitted Butzel. "It would bring people to the water. The fight back then was trading in highway funds for mass transit, shifting people back from cars to trains." Westway became a litmus test for whether you were promass transit or highways. Marci Benstock, another indefatigable leader of the anti Westway forces, told the press that the driving force motivating her was her love of the subways. No one could argue that New York's subway system was rundown and in need of massive infusions of capital. For rider ship to rebound, the fleet of trains needed to be replaced by newer models, and the shabby stations given facelifts. Through recent federal legislation, sponsored by New York congresswoman Bella Abzug, a mechanism existed for highway funds to be traded in for mass transit. It would never amount to a dollarfordollar exchange; at most, thirty or forty cents on the dollar. The federal government and Congress, having committed over a billion dollars for Westway, was not about to take kindly to New York City's saying, "On second thought, we don't really want that highway you thought so much of, can you give us a billion for our subways instead?" The masstransitversushighways choice was, from the start, a false one, since any balanced regional system needed both. As a New York Times editorial put it: "We deem false the assumption that Westway is an alternative to mass transit and that the two modes are irreconcilable. Westway forms a most significant part of a total transportation strategy. It will accommodate deliveries and services that never take the subway." О и tboard. or the battle of westway 95 MUNICIPAL CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS that require a long while to win approval inevitably traverse several economic cycles, falling into and out of sync with the mood of the moment. So it was with Westway. Its redevelopment piece began as a way to boost a moribund area that needed development, then was transformed by a hot real estate market into something else. By the time the boom years of the 1980s had arrived, and there was a serious housing shortage, and coops in Greenwich Village, S0H0, andTriBeCa were going for skyhigh prices, and plans were afoot to throw up hideous highrise apartment buildings at the end of every block that overlooked the Hudson River, the notion of the city government promoting upscale residential and commercial development-on landfill, no less-seemed obscene.