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An Authority in Action. An Account of the Port of New York Authority and Its Recent Activities

1961; Duke University School of Law; Volume: 26; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1190618

1945-2322

Sidney Goldstein,

Law, logistics, and international trade

The following is a discussion of the New York Port Authority's most recent contributions in coping with the complex terminal and transportation problems which beset the huge metropolitan area which it serves.It covers, first, the Port Authority's creation; second, its organizational and financial structure; third, the means by which it is subject to popular control; and finally, recent Port Authority endeavors which dramatize the agency's dynamic character.Before commencing this discussion, I should like to point out that the Port Authority is currently operating twenty-two terminal and transportation facilities in the metropolitan area of New York and northern New Jersey, an area composed of over 13,000,000 people residing in more than 360 separate and distinct communities, embracing 220 municipalities.Port Authority facilities represent a net capital investment of over one billion dollars.They consist of four bridges and two tunnels between the States of New York and New Jersey, four airports, and two heliports, six marine terminals, three inland freight terminals, a grain terminal and a bus terminal.In addition, the Port Authority maintains nine regional trade development offices in the United States and overseas, appears continuously before Congress and federal agencies on matters of concern to the commerce of the Port and makes periodic studies of ways to improve that commerce, including the feasibility of providing additional terminal and transportation facilities i. The Creation of the Port AuthorityAn accident of history divided the geographically unified Port of New York area between the Colonies of New York and New Jersey.Throughout the nineteenth century this division led to many interstate quarrels, the most famous of which concerned the Hudson River steamboat monopoly that New York had granted to Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton