Hello, I'm City Journal editor Brian Anderson.

Thanks for joining us for the 10 Blocks podcast featuring urban policy and cultural commentary with City Journal editors, contributors, and special guests.

Hello, this is Aaron Wren, contributing editor at City Journal.

As you know, we have been doing a lot of articles, both in recent issues and forthcoming on the future of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. And to talk more on that topic,

I'm pleased to be here today with Robert Poole. He is Director of Transportation Policy and

Searle Freedom Trust Fellow at the Reason Foundation, actually co-founded the Reason Foundation,

is one of America's most eminent, innovative

transportation experts. So, Bob, thank you very much for joining us. I appreciate it.

Glad to be here, Aaron.

What is the Port Authority?

Well, Port Authority is almost 100 years old. It's a big institution that was created

to improve the ports of New York and New Jersey and the

associated transportation. Over the years, it evolved into running the three major airports,

the building and running the bridges and tunnels across the Hudson River between New Jersey

and New York, a mass

transit system that loses a ton of money, a port authority bus terminal that is apparently

in very poor shape, and miscellaneous so-called economic development projects that lose money and are done as political favors to the

governors of the two states. So it's really kind of gotten out of control from what it was originally

intended to be.

What do you think is the core problem with the Port Authority?

Well, the core problem is what the Port authority considers its strength, and that is that

all the money that they raise from revenue producing enterprises, whether they make profits

...