>> thank you all for coming in a couple housekeeping things before we get the ball rolling here. after the conversation q&a at cole was signed copies on the table behind her and how. we have copies available and we

did have supply chain issues and are first-order ended up going to a church somewhere in jersey. but we did get some more. if you'd like a signed copy and we run out i'll put some on hold for you. we have more coming and i let my colleagues know that at the register. we do have copies of the register but should we run out we will order some more and will have nicole signed the book so you'll haven your signed copies when they come in. if you did not check in please do so the end of event but for those of you with general admission tickets your tickets are $5 per person so if he ordered two tickets to a 10-dollar gift card and someone ordered by tickets they have a 25-dollar gift card. you can use them towards anything in the store and you can use it for a copy of "movement" or any other books you'd like. thank you all again for coming.

my name is joe and events manager at pnt knitwear. i welcome howard wolfson who will chair the q&a and talk with michael. recently named among 10 best books you should readnt this november "movement" has been called a powerful movement for infrastructure by christian boemer. they researched the underbelly of new york politics the brinksmanship the commitment the short-sighted self-interest and along these by rachel weinberger and simply the best book on explaining the history of our physical city the protagonist in obstructionist use of nuances at the time by former new york city commissioner samuel l. swartz.

a regular comment of the post and quoted source in your times in "wall street journal" "wall street journal" and future bidding j editor to the manhattn journal nicole has covered new york transportation issues for over a decade and the author of the book after the fall. along with his work at bloomberg howard servedr as nixed the deputy mayor for government affairs inat syndication from 20 to 2013 service that indications director for thect hillary clinton -- in 2008 and is chief ofwe staff to kneel executive director of the democratic charisma campaign committee and every level of government charles schumer kristin gillibrand among others. howard graduated from the university of chicago and duke university. please welcome nicole and howard. [applause] >> thank you for that warm will

come. this is a distinguished group of transportation expertspe and advocates so it's really a pleasure to be speaking with so many knowledgeable and engaged people. it's a particular pleasure to be with nicole this evening. this is a terrific book. i loved it and i hope you will either have read it or will read it. it's's certainly the best histoy of transportation policies in new york i think ever written and one of the absolute best books about new york ever written. one of the things we can talk about today is how many areas of city life you touch upon in the book and talking about transportation and criminal justice issues, education issues housing issues. they are all intersected with transportation issues so we will talk about that. i want to open with an open-ended question. i'm curious why transportation policy how you got interested in

this and why you chose this book to write at this time >> thank you howard. why transportation policy? because transportation is the one government thing that we do every single day and it touches on all of our lives and it encompasses all the other issues you just talked about. why this topic? as many of you are aware this years the 50th anniversary of the powerbroker, the classic but we tend to focusus and obsess or that era and it's actually been longer since the powerbroker was written in the era that the powerbroker covers. if you think about the era and the automobile was in its ascendancy in new york city and other american global cities roughly the era to the 1960s

been than longer since then that era was. i got a thinking something must have happened in these d last 60 years or we don't to talk about the past 50 years so what is happening these past 50 years in terms of rebuilding the subway system starting in the 1980s, the era of building bike lanes, pedestrian crosses after the turn of the millennium, the activism involves not only defeating the highway era and taking some street space back from the automobile in favor pedestrians and bikes and other users and how was it done politicallyss correct this appls to you want to get something done politically in new york city it's not good enough to just say k i've got this great idea. you have to know how you get

this accomplished in one of the most complex political environments in e the world and it's interesting to see how that environment has changed the history and how various people including from surprising backgrounds have cracked the code of how do you go fromom an idea to having the idea being enacted into wisdom. let's talk about one of those ideas that may actually be on the verge of being inactive being an idea for quite some time as you talk about in the book. congestion. we are onhe the verge of congestion pricing being rolled out in new york city after many fits and starts. wondering what your take is on that at this moment and how do you sort of think about that in the history of this issue which many mayors have attempted. i did not even know that this was something that mayor

bloomberg. one of the actual wonderful things in the book is you can learn how many things keep coming around and about before they occur. congestion pricing being one of the best examples. we may be on the verge of getting it and acted in what are your thoughts about that >> congestion pricing, this is an idea that actually does date back to the early 1970s come even earlier than that, the first proposals to charge people to cross the east river bridges where they would have accomplished the same goal as congestion pricing. nobody could drive a motor vehicle into manhattan for free. .. r what has not happened first of all you need a persistent consistent activism community that just won't take no for an answer. i know sam and charles are both

here and so so have been working on this consistently for the entirety of this 50 years but that is necessary it is not that is necessary but it is not sufficient. what else was necessary to finally make pricing and incredible political idea, if one that we still don't have in practice was a subway in commuter rail system that actually worked. you cannot charge people to come into manhattan if they don't have a viable alternative in terms of i want to get on the subway. i want to get on the busus. not inconvenienced by taking mass transit. it took the creation of the mta inhe 1968. funding was did not come until the early 1980s the decreasing crime on the transit system which should not come until the

early 1990s before he had ast transit system that people actually wanted to use. all of those things that the stage for what the blue administration tried to do in 2007, 2008. that was also necessary a mayor who was committed to this idea but also not sufficient politics, governor power in new york state. if the governor is not only opposed to pricing, but not willing to put his or her political capitol behind congestion pricing is still does not happen. that is what we see today. governor hochul i inherited this a lot from the previous governor it was never her project. overall she is been a week at governor on many, many issues. we will see if she turns her onr paws on congestion pricing.

if so this will be something that was again half a century in the making. >> what is your prediction if it does come to pass this will be groundbreaking. i will be at high standards of revolutionary. are you hopeful, do you support it? but it seems the nine states its groundbreaking by the sands of the rest of thehe world, we are1 years behind. london do this 21 years ago. stockholm has had this for 15 years. this is kind of a technology it's almost come and gone and much of the rest of the world. predictions, i won't consider congestion pricing in place until someone actually drives the first vehicle under the things and pays the first hole.

i will say as a word of warning, she is a week governor. we are not here to criticize politicians. that is important you need strong political leadership to enact policies that you support and want to be enacted. something like understanding how the state legislature works. understanding with the governor supposed to do. but the governor can deal with thent government has and hasn't done for the things are important your policy put in place. in what way is she weak on this? she has let herself on many issues be defined by state legislature. this is where she has a lot in place. does she have enough time to get this stripped down program enacted before january 20? if you don't understand how processes or, two months will go by very, very quickly.

>> a lot of really wonderful personalities you bring to life in the book. so if governor of hogle is a week governor, who is somebody who sticks out to you as a strong leader? who, in the face of opposition made a major difference at some point along the way in the story? >> bloomberg certainly was a good leader on transportation and that take the political blowback for things that now seem common sense. youre have to make room for bicycles on the streets. the avenues have five and six lanes for car and truck traffic but when it's moving traffic or in traffic. take part in those lanes away and see what happens but same thing with pedestrian pauses.

but not as controversial but bloomberg was put up with people making fun of him. these headlines in the paper, a lot of mayors would say i got three issues that are way more important than this. this is not even in my top 20 problems of the day. let's put it aside i'm going to have more criticism and praise for. was a real estate developer that became the head of the metropolitan transportation authority. leader.he first mta was 12 years older 14 years old by then. they have enough capitol built

up in terms of being an incredible person and going to the business community. i think personal wealth if he did not get the support he needed from the governor who appointed him, he could walk away from the job. go to business leaders, real estate leaders, financial leaders going to the media and saying we need to enact taxes on businesses. we can rebuild the subway system from decades of decay and neglect that we don't rebuild the subway system, we are not going to be able to rebuild the city tax base from the decline of the 1970s. it's not to take away from very real accomplishments. he could not have done this if it weren't for governor hugh carey he could only be independent because kerri let him be independent. that's importantth for people to think about.

sometimes being governor or mayor is just appointing people. having a broad strategy to compass at strategy. those of us who read the book and think about the book often pair with jane jacobs. i think your book produced speak to the role mosesin and jacobs played not quite as nuanced as it should be? in the past?

we do have to go back and visit this b era. what you think you know may be wrong impacts what we do today and a partial out our responsibility for the decisions we make today. that narrative between a moses s being this big bad villain highways of parkways onto a city and followed for 40ow years of prominencee of people from the business community, private citizens, fdr's uncle was on thn the top people on the regional plan. like many people in the 1920s

we have to rebuild new york city maintenance zero cars to half a million cars in 15 years. it seemed unless you reorganize the city around the car, you would lose population and jobs to other places that were building around the car. regional plan came out working on his first project. the public w reputation at the time. this was notot something moses d have to build these roads he enact to other people elected people governors mayors what they continue to want until the 1960s. as for jacobs we shouldn't log the role played in 1960s and

killing the lower manhattan expressway. ten years before our woman named shirley hayes homemaker note background in urban planning. working for the city of new york. wanted to expand the art existing road the rank of greenwich village. my kids play in washington square park. i don't want this run road running through washington square park not only expanded road in washington square park went on the road that already runs through washington square park. defeated moses not alone she

cracked the code don't focus on moses focus on the elected officials who control to put pressure on the mayor. got enough votes it was incredible and that is what forced mayor wagner to cancel the road in washington square park to get rid of the road that was there. would work for jacobs as well. don't focus on moses focus on the elected officials. yet it prevents us from some successful suggest an idea we

can tap this thing and mitigate the impact on biddle south bronx. moses has been dead for decades. people in the book in the bronx are working on t that. to keep the proposals and lower manhattan, greenwich village. you also talk about the role streets block place now and advancing issues around safe streets. i am wondering given the bright fractured media environment that we faceat now, when i began my career in new york it was a

village voice has an enormous impact. the leadership has declined as there still a role for media to play and influence these kind of outcomes? can you talk a little bit about the role advocacyli journalism s played in the history of these fights? >> we are at one newspaper town today. the village voice, was the battle over washington square park. they were created to meet a new need in greenwich village. for a talk about today would say the village wasyi gentrified and the factory workers were moving out. a former bohemian lifestyle and couples were moving into the village. they went to this arts culture

and pulsing newspaper. theyt had the resources to redesign a city they wanted. the 13 years saget getting through washington square park. has the media change? can it still make a difference? yes but it is much harder. the fracturing has a different result people don't think about as much. it's not just less coverage. but people who may be focused on i want to reduce the traffic deaths. were i want to encourage more bicycling. get more people on the buses but that's wonderful and laudable to refocus on that one thing.

if you don't understand the political context in which you are pushing for this one thing, not just a local politics but state politics and federal politics. if i'm pushing to get more people on the subway but the crime level in the sky boys have skyrocketed. i need to understand how these two things worklk together. i cannot just be talking to people my own little bubble and all these other people are stupid. that does not work there's more and more of that today i'm not sure with the answers to it that beingg aware this is not everyoe reading the same newspaper you happen to see the article on a different topic that matters a lot to it you are trying to do and you may not see that today. >> robert moses was able to build a highway to the bronx he was unsuccessful in building a highway through lower manhattan.

how much of his success in one areaop is different populationsn those areas? wealthier, more gentrified you'd say in lower manhattan. how much of it is due to the fact that by the time the proposed highway in lower manhattan was being discussed there was more concerned about the role and the impact of the cars on site? >> it is a combination of both. there's no question it's easier to force aon poor population wih less of l political capitol in less time to focus on activism. it's easier to do that than to build and expressway across lower manhattan or midtown manhattan. another factor that is less understood the density. working in a different way.

if you try to widen a road through washington square park you've got 100,000 people who live right there. they know each other. people live in a larger apartment buildings for the school together. it's easier to organize versus building the expressway across the central south bronx. disbursement one of the things moses did for the wagoner administration allowed him to do is fill this in three phases. the west face is under construction at the east face is about to be under construction these people do not know each other at all. they cannot work together and say we arero going to defeat ths road. fee by the people in thecentralt 2:30 under construction.

that matters to someone of a generalization. easier to be successful activists if you are more densely populated. >> you think about, no pennington or pun intended roads not taken in history transportation policy and the work if you could go back in time when the crest of the mayor or the policymaker and save up to do this and not that or that isthat not this. what go back and do or undo? >> if we go way back, i would say gettingnd rid of the streetcars and the trolleys was a big mistake. some cities, and toronto still have most of their streetcar and trolley network intact. this was another this is the trolley tracks is. replace them with buses that

happen before it moses this time. you had three mayors starting just after the turn of the 20th century this ever going to get rid of the trolleys. replace them with buses. why did they do that? broadlyve speaking it's because there was a fresher road space to the car. it was about the buses can weave their way through the car traffic. this could be better for cars because they won't have trolley stop trolley. the transit people can get around anyway because they can just go around the cars. that obviously did not work out. please see the repression of today still very dead space for a bus late. we had a billion people a year writing the trolleys. the impact of the trolley and street system would rival the subways moving people around efficiently.

>> another moment where the city could have built more subway lines? we had more subway lines going to have more places, more likely likeher current version here? yes, there are different points in time where we could've made different decisions about the subway. for example, staten island notes savoie service across the bridge. that's something that's often blamed on moses. moses built the bridge it was his last big bridge projects. peutilization fills it with the capacity for tracks in the short version he said no and the longer more complex version he said simply won't go into brooklyn about the brooklyn subway even in a deteriorated state are running at capacity. there is not any capacity to take newis passengers onto the brooklyn subways from staten

island. the bridge built capacity for subway service, who is going to pay to operate the service? subways not like a road were once it's built he spent most the money you need to build it. you areel actually creating for yourself a permanent new deficit for you operate that the 50% loss forever. moses said who's going to operate it? there were no answers to those questions. even then, in 1964 it was very simplistic. we wish mr. moses would do this force the "new york times," business community but he won't do it. thinking about it. these difficult questions we are still dealing with. how you fund the operating deficits on subways?or how you build more subway capacity? we have not dealt with them very well at several inflection points. cooks in new york city seems to

it whips out between proms of scarcity and problems of abundance. we either have not enough people or too many. we either have not enough letters or too many. we struggle with finding thedo equilibrium. where do you think we are now in that cycle? do we have population has declined since covid? subway ridership may have been declining and may have come back most but maybe not entirely. how do you see the problems of the city today? do we have too much or not enough? >> echoes back to congestion pricing. twelve congestion pricing for people on the subways. or the city is doing so terribly we can have congestion pricing because he will dog in the subway is kind one or the other

over the past five years one important lesson to take away from the both is doing anything in new york city even the simplest thing takes a long time i'm not subway. something like moving a lane of traffic away from drivers into bicyclists. or trying to put in place a new bus lane. or even something like rules for open dining. actually implementing open dining during the pandemic was a good example of doing something very quickly and working the kinks out later i think it worked really b well we are nown a long bureaucratic process we may not get the open dining program the city could have and be like other global cities. doing anything takes a very long

time. it requires full-time persistence on the part of hundreds of activists in differentle areas. the other lesson we tend to not think about things politically unless we are in an acute crisis. that is unfortunate. do not want the subways to get back to an acute crisis like they were in the early 80s in terms of physical neglect for the early 90s in terms of the crime situation. trying to move away from the environment of acute crisis, the only time we have realized that recentlyrg was during the era. and again during the cuomo area at work almost did have, to his credit, some focus on major infrastructure progress he wanted to accomplish. unfortunately vagary view mayors and governors focus on long-term

infrastructure projects for long term the city needs in order to make sure it retains the tax base to deal with many of the other issues. >> you mention crime and its impact on transportation and the possibilities of change in the streetscape. thomas recently wrote a book called new york new york it's a wonderful history of new york. he talks about cycles of order and disorder. at some point new york feels more orderly. people get a little tired of that. important point and it snaps back. people are tired of the disorder and what order again. to the importance of order, criminal justice, focus on our ability to open up pedestrian plazas, subway ridership and its impact on all the issues you

write about. >> the third major lesson that i took away from writing the book is as hard as it is to get new yorkers to experiment with anything, it's much harder if they don't feel a basic sense of public safety and public order again you have no prayer of doing congestion pricing when people are afraid to write on the subway. the argument more people dying cars that is true. if you are thinking about that decision do i get on the subway and risk having something unpleasant happen or do i get in the car almost certainly have a perfectly pleasants ride. these are the decisions people make on a day-to-day basis if you do not feel a sense walk down the street and you don't feel like the street belongs to you. without that base of public

safety and public order that was built o up beginning in the eary 1990s and going into 2019. so built up over 30 years as people felt safer and more willing to experiment. we had elected officials who could takeg some time away from constantly thinking about crime. that is see some positive changes and we started to flight away from that partly because of poor political directions. partly because of how people feel in walking the streets, writing subways, writing bike. we lost real progress in the past five years and having that basic sense i feel good about myself and the city so let's try this new think. if it works, great if it doesn't work, who cares and we have moved away from that sort of a

base where we can try something new. >> on the things you write about is nominal of elected officials and playing catch up to new technology. when i was at city hall we are huge advocates of bike lanes we did not envision they would be used as extensively as they are now five people on very fast going e bikes. we tried to promote taxis. we didn't envision uber would serve or say they served that function. could you speak to the ways technology and new technology has driven so many innovations and changes and challenges that you write about. >> one charge of elected officials is they do not want to feel that they are behind

technology. they don't want to lookov stupi. the over embrace technology. for example the e bikes. they have their place in new york city for people commuting, if you have bad knees, if you don't want to be exerting, you're all sweaty getting to work. take in the eve bike on that date may make some sense. to have an entire commercial industry build itself up for e bikes that should be treated as commercialbu vehicles, they are not insured.ty they do not have liability insurance for when they hit someone for the evite operator is injured. to have the industry take over with the latest in an adequate regulation has harmed commuter cycling. in recreational cycling in the

city. rather than controlling the technology. talk about uber and lift there's a tendency to say it's an electric vehicle should be exempt for higher vehicles maybe itit should be exempt from congestion pricing. let's not a good thing to encourage more automobile use and a density when you see people being bullied by the technology rather than controlling the technology goes back to the city's original embrace of the automobile. this is something that has to be fit into the city. we should not befitting the city around it. >> struggling with at the moment.

i was surprised at your portrayal is more favorable than i would have imagined. maybe that was a mistake on my part. wondering if you could talk about him his role in advancing less cart focused agenda. i was surprised and during this research and looking at the administration not just documents but talking to people who work in the administration including the late jake kriegel he was a broadly writes on the policies. he understood long before anyone else did we needed to get away from increasing the use of automobiles and increasing automobile infrastructure in new york city. re- abase the subway andys bus system. it was somewhat simplifying his

idea to merge the moses empire for city transitit system and ue the surplus from the told to fund mass transit. he was terrible politics of that governor rockefeller stole his idea. now factories are not located in new york going to be white collar office work but rebuilt e tax base. these areav people are going to have a choice of n work to worke need to be an amenity based city. he was right about those two things others create the environment if you were here today he would say yes we do

have to be a pic but she mentioned you interviewed jake kriegel who played an important role in the lindsey administration. a wealth of knowledge about so many about the history of the city how many interviews did you do for the book? >> think about 300. it teaches you you've got to get the stuff done. decker ravitch passed away joe kriegel passed away i worked on the environmental movement the clean air movement that was the basis for that legal agreement making sure you get the stuff downwn in people's own words before it's too late has turned out to bean very important. >> 's or anyone you wanted to interview you did not get a

chance tot return down or thougt available? >> chuck s schumer. every single person on my list that was alive at some point answered me and talk to me. or getting in touch with their cousin. i want to talk to about capping the expressway per couple other issues. hope they'll catchch up next tie around. for a swing at him for edition of the bibliography in the book is wonderful. if someone is interested in learning more about transportation history what are some books you recommend they read? >> always read sam's a book for not only the policy the future

these sort of gingerly moving away at. >> an expert on transportation. >> absolute read his books. i also said the empire on the hudson to get the other side of the growth of public authorities. this was the book that talked about the history of the port authority. villas done a much more recent book for the centennial how these institutions work and don't work. why some things that seem absurd may be but to understand why phil did a good job of that. his own port authority book. there are many, many more. if i think of more as we go along i will tell you personally at the end of the evening.

>> you think now about the book, who did you imagine the leader was going to be when you are writing? is it a general audience, is it a newtr york audience? as an urban audience? transportation junkies, who's the reader? >> i wanted to make sure you don't have to be a transportation junkie to enjoy the book. i am friends with many transportation junkies. our numbers in the subway cars when each off them was put in place. this is not bap. the same thing with what she be the hourly throughput on a particular avenue. those engineering issues. i don't get into any of that stuff. not that it's not very important for some people to know about those things. but, a person he was interested

in new york i history. just to see how the politics work. and frankly a future elected officials and future appointed officials, three goals in mind for your administration, what are the things that i need to know how the governorship works? what are the mistakes that my predecessors made in this position? one of the successes my predecessors had? how did they specifically accomplish or fail to accomplish things in different policy areas? not just in i transportation? >> of my mayay cargo and i'm reading the book i might think boy, cars are popular. why is the book consistently favoring a set of transportation alternatives to the automobile

given that so many people by their car? how do both you as the author and those of us who are in government, how should they be thinkinghe about the fact it mit not be a good thing for people to drive in midtown lots of people to want to drive in midtown. i like to think it's like a 500 page book broadly speaking anti- car. then he got two pages and sometimes you do need to be in a car. i think that is important to write this goes back to the moses myth there is no american city and no global city that doessp not have some automobile transportation. i was in that city. nobody is saying we're going to entirely cut new york city off from automobile traffic can be e

pedestrian bicyclist paradise. you do need cars. that are not well served by transit. you need people who want or need to get away and a private motor vehicle for various reasons and broaderhe reasons. success is measured there are certain parts of the densest urban areas where you should not limited automobile traffic. of course times square, global comparisons of the places like garden, pedestrian areas of the perished quays, copenhagen, central street. there are some areas where you do not want cars. what's it like a free bus service going to those areas. there are other places you want to narrow the road. you're not going to get rid of the cars there.

but we succeeded with the speed and red light cameras that you don't have people driving their 50 miles per hour. making sure they're fitting themselves into the streetscape rather than dominating the streetscape is the goal here. and maybe you hate transit. maybe you hate pedestrian plazas. you hate bike lanes you should read the book just so that you understand how all these things came to be. >> on me open it up now for questions on the audience, if we have any. yes, sir? [inaudible]

>> i said hi my name is christopher lee. [inaudible] greg thank you christopher and thanks for calling. the open streets just like the open dining during the early months of the pandemic. they rolled out these two things quickly and at a time when people couldn't or felt uncomfortable going to see a friend or relative at their home. they were not allowed to dine indoors for quite some months even going into 2021 opening up the street scape and queens ques

around jackson heights, columbus on the upper west side. many of these open streets a place receipt for the first time let your kid right around on a bike andor not have to worry abt that. i think doing those things quickly was a good thing for new york's recovery. it would not of been possible at the city had not already proven we can have a block closed off for pedestrians. we can repurpose a space in the world is not going to fall apart. i think that worked out well. the longer-term challenge is, you can't sort of take away traffic on a wide road bed and declare this to be an open street. it's harder to do in an area that is less dense. so, to make sure the street is

used for positive you need a certain amount of money to program that space but some kind that arts and culture but some kind of organized sports. you kind of need somebody in of negative uses. these things are more complex in the context of a where the block is, is there a place for delivery? earlier in the 20th century the police commission of all people decides me too close streets for children to play. presumably there is some concern about what kids were doing with their time. maybe less rather than more constructive. not that they see happening today with the more you read the book, the more you can on earth thesegs wonderful hidden gems of things that we have forgotten in our own history. any other questions?

[inaudible] they were really cool and i was little. my other question would new york be like paris, london, budapest which have better transportation? not just the financial. >> the short answer is i don't know. washington has a transit system that's not as much a transit city as new york is. london and paris you mentioned budapest i have not been there. copenhagen, stockholm is strikingly more easy to fund and

run an efficient system in those places then it is to do here. that has a with all sorts of things from funding, to splitting the politics or among three different levels of government. there is no transit there is not much of a bicycling advocacy community. but it other levels of government are known to do all these things. you don't need 50 people being paid to advocate for transit to know you should kind of run the trains. there many idiosyncratic differences among these places. it may be too easy to say if we were the political capitol all of our problems would be solved. [inaudible] it's also about people.

can you speak about some of the more colorful characters involved with transit? talked about washington hayes we talked about lindsey. another big one is mike quill that is similar to lindsey. i have a much more nuanced picture than i did when he started out reaching the 1966 transit strike. it was important and that was the first time we had no transit. they showed how important transit was to the city. if we had not had that strike arguably we would not have. the mta and eventually refunded the transit system. that transit strike with stripe. as the head of the transport

workers union in a much more complex man that i think history gives him credit for. he really understands the subtleties of the changing political environment. 110 things lindsey ran and won on was he wanted to end the old machine politics way of doing things.. the power sectoron unions. one of the reasons he police did not like them they won the police to work more hours at night. very reasonable request in the era of risingg crime but he was not able to accomplish that. seeing how mike quill saw this as a laborer's last stand against a technocratic governor in an era that would become a

terrorist were skeptical of labor unions and realizing if we go along with this we would be going along with things forever. he refused to go along. that's when the split of weakening private sector unions and strengthening the public sector unions really began. he was much more then telling the judge to drop dead. these were very well thought out strategy and tactics. even telling the judge to drop dead he understood it's an attention economy unless you get the sound bites, you are not winning in new york city politics for better and for worse. as our current president knows. [inaudible]

cooks i think self driving cars they certainly can and will change the urban environment. whether they do that for the better or for the worse will be up to the elected andic appointd officials and that leads out in his book a few years ago, you do not want a scenario where it is so cheap to procure and use a self driving car i can put my kid in a car and have that child be driven to one school. put my other kid in another car you are proliferating the number of cars on the street. unless they are adequately priced for all of the externalities they create. we have to resist the temptation

to say we can have these cars going very quickly and a caravan if we do not let pedestrians crossba the street as often. or going back to redesign the streets around the car rather than the other way around. as long as they fit into a successful urban environment they may improve safety. but again as sam notes it subway car is the safest mode of man.portation known to even saferrc than commercial airline flights from an operational point of view. anything that takes people off of a subway and puts them in a car meets are very high bar in terms of safety issue as well. >> question here? first of all congratulations. >> thanks. how would you get people on all sides to embrace new

transportation policy? >> that's a greati question i a venture owner run-ins with this. i hope it does not fit in a left/right divide. new york is a unique environment where, and much of the country all the cities like l.a., nashville have been at least marginally embracing more transit over the past 20 years. and a lot of the country people don't think about transit they one 100% depend upon their car. from my perspective i respect the other perspective, leave those peoplee alone. i'm not going out and saying i'm going to take away your car, you are a bad person. wherever you live in suburban america. this argument is about new york city similar dense cities that

have a transit infrastructure in place. how doo we marginally weigh the skills in more of transit traffic, but traffic and cycle traffic away from the cars? hopefully people on the left, on the right,ag in the middle can e the pragmatic arguments for some of these issues without the conspiracy rising over that city on the one hand and no, there's don't crime on the subway on the other hand. these issues succeed on some middle ground. [inaudible] >> it is very difficult. that points up why this is been a battle of inches. i think the biggest success was

the bloomberg administration understanding we cannot get congestion pricing but we do control the physical streets. there is a lot we can do on the physical streets with just the mayor. that may or may depend on albany for a lot of things. for most of the city tax revenue sources to public law enforcement. the setch of laws in which the city operates. but when it comes to what lane lienis this street belong to? the mayor can change that very quicklyr,. just having a mayor who will stand up for his or her appointees on the landscape of the street itself can be used for good or fulfill or fulfill ways cities not even gotten to yet. just that design in the streets is a good place to re- remember

and to start with. >> our time is coming o short. we will have one more question, yes, sir? [inaudible] >> i think that respects to paul's i question. it would make a lot of sense to have a transit revenue source that's based on the value of the property a. if you are half a mile out from a major transit line part of your property tax goes to operating that transit line. something east side access would

have made sense to take a little bit of the long island property taxes a along that right-of-way and use that to defray the cost of east side access. why isn't done? again as paul brought up or alluded to the city controls the property tax. the state controls a transit system. there is never any incentive for the city to agree its own tax to fund the state run transit system and have the governor get the credit to the extent anyone notices the transit system is running a little bit better than it was before. >> nicole, any last words any last things you are not asked that you like to say? >> no i want to say thank you again. you pretty much covered it i'm happy to talk after words if anyone has thoughts. quick hope everyone buys the book by one for your friendship. [applause] thank you as well. >> thank you all for coming out.

>> and get a call, thank you howard remind us that the signing portions of tonight'sig event we have a couple copies left at the register. in the event we run out, more are on the way we can have one reserved for you. the signing line will start with me at staff pics and a half an hour so please enjoy yourselves and have a great night. [background noises] the book shelf podcast feed all of feature nonfiction books in one place you can discover new authors and ideas were making convenient for you to listen to multiple episodes critically acclaimed authors discussing history, biography, current events and culture. from her signature program about books, after words in footnote

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