The Cross Bronx Expressway, Externalities, and the Shaping of the Modern Bronx

In 1948, New York City Urban Planner Robert Moses began work on his Cross-Bronx Expressway,  a six-lane highway running East to West across the Bronx that was designed as a means of transportation into the city for commuters that lived in Long Island and New Jersey. The project was controversial at the time and continues to draw criticism today by those who argue that the highway favored a wealthy demographic that could afford cars over the neighborhoods of poor families in the Bronx that were left worse-off because of the externalities created by the expressway. New York City paid families $200 a room to vacate apartments that were in line with the expressway route. While the payment of those displace families ameliorated their displacement to some extent, speaking retrospectively this value does not seem to come near an allocatively efficient solution. First, it did not account for the families and businesses that remained near the expressway and saw their property value drop sharply as the noise from the expressway created a massive externality. Additionally, the wealthier families that previously lived near the highway moved South into Manhattan or were pushed North into Westchester County, leaving many buildings vacant in the South Bronx. The construction of the the Cross Bronx Expressway still has visible affects on the South Bronx, but they likely reached their peak in the 1970s, some building owners chose to burn down their properties to collect the insurance return, realizing that this was not more profitable than expending the resources to maintain largely vacant apartment buildings. The 1960s and 70s also saw the rise of gangs in the South Bronx, a result of the rise of poverty and lack of policing in the post-expressway Bronx. If the Cross Bronx Expressway had been constructed by a private company, there may have been a Coasian solution that came somewhere near an allocatively efficient outcome, perhaps paying neighborhood families enough to negate the externalities and keep them from moving out of the area. Instead, the Bronx was left largely poor and lacking the resources for revitalization.

President Jimmy Carter visiting the South Bronx in the late 70s

1950s construction of the Cross Bronx Exressway