Field of Schemes: Viva Westway?

July 14, 2004

Viva Westway?

In a long essay in yesterday's New York Sun, columnist (and former Rudy Giuliani speechwriter) John Avlon goes full-tilt after opponents of the proposed $1.4 billion New York Jets stadium, lashing out at preservationists and opponents of Westway alongside Cablevision's anti-stadium ads, about which Avlon charges:

The ads show firefighters and coffee shop waitresses opining that the city and state’s combined $600 million investment in the stadium and convention center [ed. note: including the convention center it'd actually be more like $2 billion] could better be spent on education.

The problem is that budgets don’t work that way. When money is saved in one area, it is not automatically transferred to another budget column. Money not spent on the stadium will not magically relieve school overcrowding or buy kindergarten supplies from here to kingdom come - it will be absorbed into the bureaucratic ether, $300 million in city dollars never heard from again, gone to finance debt services or pension costs.

Actually, budgets do work that way, at least in New York City, which is constitutionally mandated to have a balanced budget. The only way to send $300 million into the "ether" of debt service or pension costs would be to sell more bonds or raise pensions - say, by increasing the school construction budget or hiring more teachers?

Economists call this "What else could we have done with the money (or land)?" question the "opportunity cost," and it's one that it usually willfully ignored by developers seeking public subsidies. Similarly, Avlon writes that for Westway, the multi-billion-dollar highway project that was killed by lawsuits in the 1980s, "the city would not have paid a dime" (a sentiment echoed by a recent New Yorker essay comparing the Jets stadium to Westway). Except that Westway would have borne a tremendous opportunity cost: once the highway was scrapped, the city was able to trade in the federal funds for $1.4 billion in mass transit money. Those new ether-driven subway cars sure do ride smooth...

COMMENTS

"... Except that Westway would have borne a tremendous opportunity cost: once the highway was scrapped, the city was able to trade in the federal funds for $1.4 billion in mass transit money. Those new ether-driven subway cars sure do ride smooth..." Westway was not only the least expensive means of constructing a replacement underground West Side Highway, but also the most profitable with the real estate development of some of the land created, while an underground replacement West Side Highway would best reduce vehicular pedestrian conflict and reduce pollution (particularly with filtration as done outside the USA). Canceling Westway deprived NYC of this much needed highway tunnel and its environmental benefits, and of the millions if not billions in extra real estate development revenue and taxation which would have provided a perpetual source of new funding for schools and non-automotive mass transit. The $1.4 billion for non automotive mass transit would have been better obtained by reforming MTA; indeed if the "Straphangers Campaign" and others targeted that instead, we would probably already have Westway AND a 2nd Avenue Subway!
Posted by: Douglas A. Willinger at October 14, 2005 11:32 PM