If you drive along the West Side Highway near the Lincoln Tunnel, you’ll notice that all of the signs for the tunnel have an I-495 shield on them. That’s a bit strange right? The Midtown Tunnel, which is on the East side and several stoplights away from the Lincoln Tunnel, is the beginning of 495, so why do the signs call the Lincoln Tunnel 495? Much like the unbuilt Hoboken bridge I wrote about last semester, those signs are simply the result of an incomplete transportation project.
In 1941, the city’s master plan of express highways included some type of expressway to carry traffic across Midtown, primarily between the Lincoln and Midtown Tunnels. It’s a fairly vague description, but the Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority and Port Authority finalized the concept by 1955. The expressway was supposed to be a $91 million, 6-lane expressway connecting the West Side Highway and FDR Drive with exits for both tunnels. The area was not going to be completely torn down for the expressway though, unlike what happened to build the Cross Bronx Expressway. For $14 million, the expressway would allow for some type of development above and below it. After I realized what that meant, I realized how crazy this project was to begin with. The Mid-Manhattan Expressway was supposed to be a sky-way through buildings. I can only imagine the elevator buttons on one of those buildings: floors 1, 2, 3, expressway, 5, 6, etc. The city planners also proposed a tunnel between the tunnels, but that plan would include a third tube to the Midtown Tunnel for $120 million, so it was simply too expensive. Since the expressway would have linked the Midtown Tunnel to the NJ Turnpike, the I-495 designation would have simply continued past the Midtown Tunnel. That’s also why the Lincoln Tunnel approach in New Jersey is State Route 495.
Despite how insanely expensive (and insane in general) the Mid-Manhattan Expressway plans were, that wasn’t the worst plan.
Robert Moses, who was the planner behind most parkways and expressways in the Tri-State area, had plans to connect the Holland Tunnel with the Williamsburg Bridge via a Lower Manhattan Expressway, Lomex for short. In order to do this, the highway would have to traverse SoHo, Little Italy, and the Lower East Side. Since the plans for Lomex resembled the plans for Cross-Bronx Expressway more than the plans for the Mid-Manhattan Expressway, much of the area would have been completely leveled. Led by Jane Jacobs, local opposition to Lomex ultimately convinced Governor Rockefeller to kill the idea in 1971. If it had been built, the neighborhoods could have easily experienced the same fate as the South Bronx. The number of people, businesses, and families displaced would have started a cycle of poverty. Even if that did not happen, Lower Manhattan certainly would not be what it is today.
Since Lomex was supposed to begin at the Holland Tunnel, it would carry same designation as the tunnel, I-78. The interstate would have continued across the bridge and through Brooklyn as the Bushwick Expressway, another one of Moses’s unbuilt projects. The Bushwick Expressway would have provided a third route from Manhattan to JFK, but it would have been another expressway that simply disrupted pre-exiting neighborhoods.
While both of these plans were pretty crazy, Lomex was certainly the more dangerous one. Since it would traverse primarily residential areas, Moses paid little attention to how the expressway would affect the area, just like he did in the Bronx. When he tried to do the same thing in Lower Manhattan, he discovered that he tried to mess with the wrong neighborhoods and the wrong lady, Jane Jacobs. Midtown certainly would not be the same had 495 been completed either, but the effects would certainly be reduced with the $14 million for development. However the neighborhoods would have been affected, they’re probably better off without expressways cutting through them. This also puts me just where I want to be coming to and from Stevens, stuck at the same red light on 37th and Lexington for 7 minutes.
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