New York: The End of the Road

After more than a decade of political debate, court battles and environmental disputes, New York officials last week finally gave up on Westway, the $2.3 billion, six-lane extravaganza proposed to replace a decayed section of Manhattan's West Side Highway. The project was to have been built through 169 acres of landfill in the Hudson River, with real estate development and a park on top. It had the support of New York's major politicians, builders and newspapers. But a number of vocal and tenacious critics called the project environmentally unsound and a waste of money. Westway's major roadblock was Federal Judge Thomas Griesa, who twice denied the Army Corps of Engineers a permit to dredge the Hudson. Then the House of Representatives voted this month to kill funding for the project after Congressman Ted Weiss, a Manhattan Democrat, labeled Westway "a real estate boondoggle posing as a highway." New York officials said they would seek to trade in $1.7 billion in federal commitments to Westway for money to build a more modest highway and improve the city's decrepit mass-transit system.