To the editor,
Elaine Kirsch sounds as if she works for the City’s Department of Transportation (Sound off to the Editor — “Borough arteries are walker’s nightmare,” published Dec. 16.).
She doesn’t know if banning turns is the solution to increasing safety, but she wants them anyway to help pedestrians. That’s DOT’s attitude: Pedestrians and cyclists are the only ones who matter and everyone else be damned.
Elaine, we all want safer streets, but your solutions are ridiculous. You want longer traffic lights for pedestrians and to ban cars from turning while pedestrians are crossing.
Traffic signals for pedestrians were already lengthened to accommodate seniors and children. Cars are already not allowed to turn until pedestrians have finished crossing. How are signals supposed to know when pedestrians have finished crossing? Motion sensors at each corner? And cars not being allowed to go straight while cars are turning and lowering the speed limit below 25 mph? Are you kidding?
A 15- or 20–mile-per-hour speed limit would bring the average speed to below 10 miles per hour, a little more than twice the walking speed and significantly increase already slow travel times. Someone crazy enough to do 60 in a 25 miles-per-hour zone will not drive any slower if the speed limit were lower.
In short, you want to punish drivers just like DOT is already doing and you want your proposed changes to apply to streets with buses as well “because they are clogged by city buses.”
Your proposed changes will make the clogging even worse, so not only will you not be able to get anywhere by car, you won’t be able to get anywhere by bus either.
Yes, pedestrians matter, but they are not the only ones who matter. Do you at least wear light or reflective colored clothing at night to make sure drivers can see you? Safety is a two-way street, Elaine.
Allan Rosen
Sheepshead Bay
Bike lame
To the editor,
The reason I am not in favor of bike lanes is because bikers want to be part of the transportation hub but they do not want the cost of building these lanes and do not take responsibility for accidents that they cause.
Bikers that want to ride in traffic should be required to be licensed and insured. They have caused many accidents and have no financial obligation to pay the injured. Most of the time they are very arrogant and nasty when they are in error.
I also believe the reason we have so many fatalities is because the cars have been jammed together with no where to go. Pedestrian plazas, bike lanes, and parking cars in the middle of the street has made driving almost impossible, which is exactly what the politicians want.Marilyn Melman
Windsor Terrace
Chopped liver?
To the editor,
Is the Southern Tier of Brooklyn a step-child?
I see beautiful parks created and built at the foot of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. An outdoor summer facility was created along side the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway near Atlantic Avenue. So why nothing done in Southern Brooklyn?
The esplanade along the Belt Parkway is a disgrace. The ground is broken up, and many of the benches are unusable — two miles of area that could be an oasis for people. The park area along Shore Parkway between 26th Avenue and Cropsey Avenue could use a makeover.
I’m sorry if there are no hipsters here.
Frank Monaco
Gravesend
Shoot ’em up
To the editor,
Bob Capano, Council candidate for the Bay Ridge Council seat, has been slamming the possibility of a safe injection facility in Brooklyn by calling them “a taxpayer-funded shooting gallery for heroin junkies.”
Wrong.
What Mr. Capano is not going to tell you is that there are already studies of safe-injection sites, largely in Canada and Australia, that show they help to reduce overdoses.
Safe-injection sites reduce the risk of dying from heroin use because users are placed in supervised settings where they can be quickly treated for overdose symptoms. Once there, access to clean needles reduces exposure to infections, as well as diseases like hepatitis C and AIDS.
Another thing Mr. Capano is not going to tell us about is Naloxone, a fast-acting opioid antagonist that can prevent death if given within minutes of an overdose.
Several U.S. cities including New York have initiated programs that would provide Naloxone and rescue-breathing training to illicit drug users. Will these types of programs increase drug use? There has been a reported reduction in the number of overdose deaths in areas where these programs exist.
Capano cites the recent election of Donald Trump as proof that voters want “outsiders.” We do not need more outsiders, we need educated individuals advocating for ideas that they have expertise in because this perceived “heroin epidemic” is a myth.
The Drug Abuse Warning Network’s 2010 report on drug-related mortality found death caused from a single opioid is rare (about 25 percent). Heroin use is not the issue, but in conjunction with alcohol, antihistamines, and benzodiazepines is the real issue.
Change needs to happen now. Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights lead New York in new HIV infections. Mr. Capano, if you want a City Council seat in Brooklyn, you need to do better. Much better.Luke Nelson
Manhattan
Sham Gershbein
To the editor,
In response to Stan’s column (“Stan’s family never took welfare” by Stan Gershbein, online Oct. 3)you would have to work very hard to find any of today’s immigrants on welfare.
I have Russian, Mexican, and Chinese neighbors who are recent immigrants and none of them are on welfare or any other assistance. In fact, in Chinese culture, it is considered almost a crime to take any government help. Hispanics feel the same way. They work just as hard as his mother did when the came to this country.
Stan, please visit these communities and speak to these people. You will find out I am correct.
Miriam Heisler
Midwood
America’s X-mas gift
To the editor
America has been given a great Christmas present as the electoral collage convened and officially gave us a new president, Donald Trump.
Now President Obama after leaving office, Hillary and the democrats are free to dog his every move, to their own peril.
First lady, Michelle is busy on the talk show circuit saying that with Trump’s election, there is no more hope and change and she is once again not proud to be an American. On the contrary my dear, Americans, through their constitutional voting rights, stood up for a sea change which now has raised the hopes and spirits of the common man and woman.
All we now have to do is let the new regime do what they said they’d do, and I am sure the democrat’s heads will continue to spin!
Robert W. Lobenstein
Marine Park
This is the end
To the editor,
To all those who are overjoyed that Trump won the Presidency, here is what you have won: An end to Medicare, the end to the Affordable Care Act, the gutting Social Security (there is a bill from the Republicans to do this already), an end to vacations, no overtime bill, an end to the increase in the minimum wage, end paid sick time, an increase in discrimination against any non-white person, end to abortions when needed for health reasons, the end to the Endangered Species Act — and this is just the beginning.
Anything that the people need to survive is being taken away. He cares nothing about the people — just his own kind.
The end to the Environmental Protection Agency, the increase in drilling wherever the government wants. Trump is already appointing several climate-change deniers because any legislation to improve the environment is bad for business. (This will offset whatever the rest of the world will be doing.) No clean air or water. An end to the beauty of public land.
All of this is just the beginning. And then there is the new buddy system with Russia. So thanks to all for ruining this once great country. (Yes this is my opinion and I am allowed to have it.) We will see the result over time.Ronald Cohen
Gravesend
Thanks for nothing, Obama
To the editor,
As Obama prepares to leave his failed presidency, his biggest concern is tying loose ends. As I write this, he is scurrying to release the Islamic terrorists housed in Guantanamo Bay and to pardon or commute the sentences of prisoners in U.S. jails who have committed crimes against society. This, along with his eighth-year failed stint as Ideologue-in-Chief defined the American voters’ choice on November 8.
As for Obama’s legacy, there is none. A legacy is reserved for one who has performed good deeds for country, people and humanity, in general. Obama has done none of the above. It is his failure that woke up the sleeping giant, known as “working-class America” whose members took their revenge on an incompetent crooked bungler known simply by “Hillary,” much like “Elvis” or “Liberace,” except that the latter two gave us pleasure, while the former gave us grief.
The Democratic consortium is crying, refusing to accept president-elect Donald J. Trump’s victory. The denial core wept, protested and even threatened the Electors that voted on December 19. In addition to crying and refusing to accept the results of the election, the younger in-denial consortium (America’s future “leaders”) was provided with psychiatric help, play dough and puppies by their colleges and universities. If that wasn’t enough, those colleges and universities declared their higher order of learning institution “sanctuary dwellings” where illegal aliens can either study or hide from the law.
Hillary Clinton lost due to a multitude of reasons, among those: She is not a well-liked pweson and she is properly viewed as distrustful, with a personality comparable to that of a piece of lint. She, Bill and Chelsea made a conscious decision to use Hillary’s Department of State position to solicit money from near and far for favors when elected president — and she destroyed the e-mails that would implicate her. She refused to provide reinforcements during the Benghazi Islamic attack, causing four American deaths, which she later lied about. In addition to the above, the Hillary Clinton’s sleaze spans some four decades, all without consequence – until now. Voters accomplished what four decades of law enforcement could not accomplish: Indict and convict Hillary – but in a court of public opinion – and deny her the presidency.
Still, an irrelevant Jill Stein who received some 1 percent of the popular vote demanded a recount in which Mr. Trump picked up more votes. But that wasn’t enough; Democrats threatened the Electors, with Michael Moore offering to bribe some of them. After the Electors soundly rejected Hillary, Obama blamed the loss on Russian and WikiLeaks hacking, FBI Director James Comey’s disclosure that Hillary is a crook (we all knew that) and I’m sure many other factors that we don’t know of yet. I’m surprised that Obama did not Blame George W. Bush.
So it’s over. On January 6, in a joint session of Congress, Joe Biden will unseal the Electors’ results of all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and pronounce Donald trump the victor. Still, the usual suspects are hard at work to throw a monkey wrenche into the 45th President’s plans to “Make America Great Again.” To those inclined to waste the next four years to hurt America, I have a message: Donald Trump was elected because Obama, with your help, failed and America was going into an abyss in which it might never recover: A $20T debt, slow economic growth and few jobs along with a depleted military, a stronger and emboldened enemy with a nuclear Iran and an open southern border,
With President Trump, we, at least, have a chance. Do any of you understand that? Probably, not!
Elio Valenti
Brooklyn, NY
