Yevgeny Shrago
NPR’s Planet Money has an interesting story about why the Tappan Zee Bridge is in the wrong place, on a much wider part of the Hudson River than if it had been placed a few miles farther south. Essentially, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had a monopoly on all bridges within a 25 mile radius of the Statue of Liberty. If then-New York governor Thomas Dewey had put the bridge farther south, he couldn’t have used the money from toll revenues on the bridge to fund the New York State Thruway. Naturally, libertarians have a story about how this illustrates the inferiority of public infrastructure. Matthew Yglesias ably rebuts this claim, but I think his second point about the problems with federalism in a metro spread between several states doesn’t go far enough. [Read more…] about Zee Public Authority Problem