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out of any big city that I know anything about. Too many vehicles; too many people. You can't take care of people anyway, no matter what they do. Even the present huge system which runs to $100 billion, $50 billion for new work and $50 billion for conventional work, is not going to do that. These signs that were put up in probably a dozen states on the parkways and existing main arteries -- in the event of atomic attack the military and police are going to take over these arteries. These are perfectly preposterous signs. I took all of ours down on the grounds that it was time to repair them and never put them back.

I can assure you, and George will back me up in this with his experience, that the key places which are in a city like New York are primarily the crossings. Within a half an hour after any such alarm as has been indicated, not only would these arteries be completely choked up but there would be devastation due to people being run down, run over, cars running into each other. All you need now in any of the main arteries is to have one car break down. Very often in spite of all we have done, with turnouts and additional lanes, one car breaks down -- cars run into each other behind, it takes an hour for the police to settle them down. That isn't even a case exclusively of summer or holidays -- it happens any time. And this afternoon on Southern State Parkway on Long Island, the most used parkway in the world, we have our own police and we know exactly what goes on. We know what causes accidents; we know what can be done in an emergency. Incidentally, there are emergencies all day long; emergencies at night.

11/4/98

I might add also that nobody really knows anything about, accurately
about motoring habits. They change so fast. Figure out whether he is going
north or south, headed for upstate or for downstate, or east or west on Long
Island, heavy traffic is going to be in a certain direction for a certain number
of hours, and then you find out that in mid-winter it is exactly the other way
around. We don't know why. Lots of people work in plants, live in town --
we don't know the answer; nobody knows. We do know this much, any
thought that you can evacuate any large population in any reasonable time
from any large city, even if you have a place to move them to, is just so
much moonshine. It won't work; and it has been proven that it won't work.
No responsible, administrative official will advocate it. If you don't have
any responsibility, you can advocate anything.

I've been a member of the city planning commission in New York
for many years; I always refuse to be chairman to give up the substance for
what I think is the shadow. But in any event, in all those years we have had
seventy or eighty people who made pictures of this kind. I don't know
what happens to the picture; they get a hell of a lot of fun out of drawing it.

As for shelters, I regard any shelter as wholly unworkable excepting
as it applies to public, wayside public rights-of-way or, for example, I
think it would be a fine thing if we could get a reasonable amount of money
from Washington toward building what in effect would be a mezzanine
system of walks in certain strategic parts of New York City. By that I mean
42nd Street, the entire 42nd Street mid-town area, the Battery area, City Hall
area, Brooklyn and City Center, where we have a mezzanine system that

[y]

11/4/99

could be extended for miles. You could have stores underground; people
could walk. There has been a suggestion made, and I don't know how
practical this is, that a track and right-of-way largely underground of the
other streets could easily be built from Grand Central Station to Rockefeller
Center. I think that is a practical thing; I think that might be done.

That applies in many other cities. My employees have had something
to do with these surveys and studies in other cities here and abroad. I think
that we have some knowledge of what it is about. As for the cost of these
things, I just don't want to keep you too long. Let me give you just an
illustration of something that came up about two or three weeks ago. George
and I were talking to John Rockefeller about forming an art center in Lincoln
Square and, of course, one of the questions there was underground cost.
I'm sure that the people in the performing arts would like for the city to do
something about that. Naturally we wanted to do as much as possible in
view of that situation. That is a case where you begin with the university,
a new campus, where most of the students will come by rapid transit or
walk in. There won't be cars or carriages. So that Fordham in that particular
instance doesn't have much of a problem. It is a serious problem in the music
and art, performing arts center; there is a serious problem in the theater
center; and there is a more or less serious problem in the housing which
surrounds these parts of the program. The New York Times said that the
building will have adequate parking ultimately but for the time being there
is no problem because they are not going to build on the entire lot. Coming
now to the cost evident, we finally made an agreement with the opera,

11/4/100

performing art center. Wally Harrison, who was the architect and our
supervising architect, decided to build a 700-car, two-level garage, to
serve the opera and music center. The Federal Government is going to
build two-thirds of that; the city is going to pay a third. We will be able
to amortize the third, but not the two-thirds which represents Santa Claus
in a gift which makes the thing possible. The point of the thing is, that the
lowest estimate we've been able to get from responsible builders -- and we
have the best builders in New York on this work -- is $4 million for 700
cars. Just apply that and think about it a bit and see what you come to.

But on the same lines, I have repeatedly urged in the Planning
Commission and we have a panel which is assuming resolution of the City
Charter, to require additional loading facilities and additional parking
facilities in all these new buildings which are on their way or planned in
New York. Some of these people that we talk to about this by way of
persuasion not law, Chase Bank, for example, are doing a good job. Most
of them are not; most of them are emphatically opposed to anything. The last
time I had, what I thought was a very mild amendment which took care of
about one-fourth of the problem (this is the current problem -- a problem
aggravated by an attack), we got licked in the Board of Estimates by
unanimous vote. Nobody gave any explanation. When we talk about this
defense problem as an incidental feature, they all began whispering to each
other, and the vote was 16 to nothing.

Now bringing this back again, I don't think there is a chance of
getting anything done. That really isn't so much nobility on my part but
sheer stubbornness at taking another whack at it. The result would be just

11/4/101

about the same. And the result is just about the same in practically every municipality in the country with a few exceptions. Exceptions are in the case of cities where there is a very strong political citizen and this is leadership. I'm not going to give you the chapter and verse, but I could. I would say that applied to about 5% of the municipalities with a population of more than 75,000 people. In the others, they are living from day to day. The municipal officials don't want to run off course; they don't want to run up budgets. The real estate people want to cash in on every square inch of the land that there is or every cubic inch that there is. The fellow who is putting up a big new office in New York and I talked to one of them last week and I would say, by and large, for every progressive citizen I don't think he is the kind of fellow who is going to be burned at any stake or anything of that kind. He hasn't any thirst for martyrdom but to make an honest dollar. He told me the different between the cost of his building in the existing zoning and other regulations and the cost as it would be if the last amendments that some of us had proposed. And I am referring now to only parking, underground parking and loading and unloading, the difference is so great that he had no part of it. In fact he said that he would not build his building at all, which I don't believe. But anyway, that is what he said.

Now these figures that I've heard this morning and I liked George's comment on them. They don't make any sense to me at all. They don't square in the least of anything that I know about building underground. Whether it is individual houses or anything else. Today in the housing field we've reached a point in certainly half of the municipalities of the