Point of No Return (Part 2 of 4)

Core idea

The second part of Point of No Return continues Caro's accounting of the transit money decision. If the surplus had been spent on transit, it would have been more than enough to build the long-proposed and desperately needed Second Avenue Subway, and to build a tunnel for trains under the Hudson River — the lack of which would, sixty years later, still be strangling Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit. The opportunities existed; the money existed; Moses chose not to take them.

Why it matters

The Second Avenue Subway and the trans-Hudson tunnel that were never built

If the surplus had been spent on transit, it would have been more than enough to build the long-proposed and desperately needed Second Avenue Subway, and to build a tunnel for trains under the Hudson River — the lack of which would, sixty years later, still be strangling Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit. The opportunities existed; the money existed; Moses chose not to take them.

The irreversibility deepens

Each year Moses chose highways over transit, the transit alternative became more expensive to build later. Land prices rose; rights-of-way got built over; transit construction became harder. By 1965 the alternative that had cost $700M in 1955 would have cost three or four times that. Irreversibility compounds when alternatives are postponed.

Key takeaways

Mental model

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Practical application

Example

Climate-policy postponement from 1990 to 2020 made the 1990-era $1T solution into a $20T problem. The pattern is consistent with Moses-1952. Postponement of irreversible decisions is itself a choice whose cost compounds.

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