by Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region
It's been all over the news this week that the country and the region face what could be a prolonged and deep recession. While I hope it doesn't arrive, if it does we can learn some lessons in both moderating it and preparing for the future by looking across the globe to what another country did in a similar position.
If you travel to Tokyo, you might take a ride on the city's newest subway line, No. 12, the 40-kilometer Toei Ōedo Line. It travels completely underground beneath the city and is one of the longest rail tunnels in the country.
The line just opened in late 2000 and cost about $13 billion. Much of that money came from Japan's national government as part of an economic stimulus program designed to lift the country out of the economic doldrums it suffered during the 1990s and, to some degree, still today.
The subway line is not an anomaly. In fact, if you travel around the country you'll find numerous tunnels, bridges and highways that were built as part of an economic stimulus program. In and around Tokyo they include the Gaikando, a 53-mile ring road around the city that has tunnels 52 feet in diameter, and the Tokyo Bay Aqualine, an $11 billion freeway across Tokyo Bay that includes two artificial islands and a six-mile tunnel.
While economists differ on Japan's overall response to its roughly 15 years of economic doldrums, there is little argument that its infrastructure spending has been an appropriate and useful tool in fighting that recession. It has helped Japan in two ways: it provided immediate spending for salaries and materials that went directly into the economy and it helped build the long-term future of the nation by building vital infrastructure. Nobel Prize-winning economist and former World Bank president Joseph Stiglitz called for an American version of such a program in an op-ed in Wednesday's New York Times.
Unfortunately, we have tended to do things differently in this city and the country. With the large exception of the WPA and other projects under President Franklin Roosevelt in the Great Depression, we have tended to spend less on essential infrastructure during economic downturns. Certainly that is the case here in New York State and City.
In the 1970s, which was generally speaking a decade of both high inflation and high unemployment, the city famously stopped construction of the 2nd Avenue Subway, figuring that a city that was about to default on its bonds and whose president had just told it to "Drop Dead" could not afford such a thing. Three decades later, we are tackling the same project, at considerably higher cost.
Just imagine if back in the early 1970s, the city, state and federal government had actually come together to spend more on projects like the 2nd Avenue Subway as a way to restart the economy, lower unemployment, and build a better long-term future? Not only would out-of-work folks have gotten jobs, and the total economic recession been lessened, but today's good times would have been even better because we would be enjoying a much needed subway line along Manhattan's East Side. Think of not only the more pleasant commuting we would have right now, but the new residential and office towers that would have sprung up around it in the boom of the 1990s.
Quite admirably, the region is now embarking on several massive infrastructure development projects. They include the Trans-Hudson Express, the first new Hudson River rail tunnel in a century; the 2nd Avenue Subway; the extension of the number 7 train; a new Penn Station; a direct connection from Long Island to Grand Central, and many other projects.
But "a recession is now more likely than not," said one of the Times' economic commentators, David Leonhardt, in a very readable essay on Wednesday.
If so, might I raise the thought of a preliminary attitude adjustment? If the city or country enters recession, let us pledge to redouble our efforts to get the region's necessary infrastructure built, rather than the converse. Politically what this would mean is mobilizing various forces to talk to city council members, state legislators, U.S. senators, representatives, governors and presidents about why they should fund the projects. We should sell the logic that it makes sense to spend for infrastructure during economic downturns. If we start to do this now, then it may make a difference if and when the storm hits.
It's been all over the news this week that the country and the region face what could be a prolonged and deep recession. While I hope it doesn't arrive, if it does we can learn some lessons in both moderating it and preparing for the future by looking across the globe to what another country did in a similar position.
If you travel to Tokyo, you might take a ride on the city's newest subway line, No. 12, the 40-kilometer Toei Ōedo Line. It travels completely underground beneath the city and is one of the longest rail tunnels in the country.
The line just opened in late 2000 and cost about $13 billion. Much of that money came from Japan's national government as part of an economic stimulus program designed to lift the country out of the economic doldrums it suffered during the 1990s and, to some degree, still today.
The subway line is not an anomaly. In fact, if you travel around the country you'll find numerous tunnels, bridges and highways that were built as part of an economic stimulus program. In and around Tokyo they include the Gaikando, a 53-mile ring road around the city that has tunnels 52 feet in diameter, and the Tokyo Bay Aqualine, an $11 billion freeway across Tokyo Bay that includes two artificial islands and a six-mile tunnel.
While economists differ on Japan's overall response to its roughly 15 years of economic doldrums, there is little argument that its infrastructure spending has been an appropriate and useful tool in fighting that recession. It has helped Japan in two ways: it provided immediate spending for salaries and materials that went directly into the economy and it helped build the long-term future of the nation by building vital infrastructure. Nobel Prize-winning economist and former World Bank president Joseph Stiglitz called for an American version of such a program in an op-ed in Wednesday's New York Times.
Unfortunately, we have tended to do things differently in this city and the country. With the large exception of the WPA and other projects under President Franklin Roosevelt in the Great Depression, we have tended to spend less on essential infrastructure during economic downturns. Certainly that is the case here in New York State and City.
In the 1970s, which was generally speaking a decade of both high inflation and high unemployment, the city famously stopped construction of the 2nd Avenue Subway, figuring that a city that was about to default on its bonds and whose president had just told it to "Drop Dead" could not afford such a thing. Three decades later, we are tackling the same project, at considerably higher cost.
Just imagine if back in the early 1970s, the city, state and federal government had actually come together to spend more on projects like the 2nd Avenue Subway as a way to restart the economy, lower unemployment, and build a better long-term future? Not only would out-of-work folks have gotten jobs, and the total economic recession been lessened, but today's good times would have been even better because we would be enjoying a much needed subway line along Manhattan's East Side. Think of not only the more pleasant commuting we would have right now, but the new residential and office towers that would have sprung up around it in the boom of the 1990s.
Quite admirably, the region is now embarking on several massive infrastructure development projects. They include the Trans-Hudson Express, the first new Hudson River rail tunnel in a century; the 2nd Avenue Subway; the extension of the number 7 train; a new Penn Station; a direct connection from Long Island to Grand Central, and many other projects.
But "a recession is now more likely than not," said one of the Times' economic commentators, David Leonhardt, in a very readable essay on Wednesday.
If so, might I raise the thought of a preliminary attitude adjustment? If the city or country enters recession, let us pledge to redouble our efforts to get the region's necessary infrastructure built, rather than the converse. Politically what this would mean is mobilizing various forces to talk to city council members, state legislators, U.S. senators, representatives, governors and presidents about why they should fund the projects. We should sell the logic that it makes sense to spend for infrastructure during economic downturns. If we start to do this now, then it may make a difference if and when the storm hits.
@RegionalPlan
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