Lacking a Transit Power Broker

According to Robert Caro, who wrote the epic book about Robert Moses, New York has no lack of people that can throw their weight behind transit. It's just that no one seems to feel it's worth throwing weight behind.

‘Is there power?’ ”Yes, there is, said Robert A. Caro, who called his epic biography of Robert Moses “The Power Broker.” Mr. Ravitch’s challenge, he said, was to persuade gutsy public officials to exercise power on behalf of an agenda that Moses, who championed highways over mass transit, rejected.

“It’s not a lack of power,” Mr. Caro said in an interview. “It’s a lack of vision — of a vast metropolitan area as a single whole and what is necessary to tie that area together in a way that makes every segment of the population one. There are public officials with plenty of power. That power is just never thrown behind mass transit in the way it should be.”

This is a common theme in many cities. The lack of political will for transit. But many cities aren't New York with such a high transit constituency and many in the growth machine that is any city government don't see or don't want to see that it would actually benefit them to grow inward with transit instead of outward with roads. It's been too easy to keep going the way they know, rather than the way they should go.