Better Transit Solutions for New York

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/opinion/better-transit-solutions-for-new-york.html

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To the Editor:

Re “A Stronger Transit Web, on the Water” (editorial, April 18):

Expanding the use of our waterways through New York City ferry service will make travel easier for commuters along Brooklyn’s western shoreline, as your editorial notes, but your suggestion does not go far enough. Transit-starved communities from Coney Island to Canarsie continue to be stranded by the city’s transportation system.

For many of our carless residents, commuting is difficult, with limited options. Subway stations are sparse, and the prospects for extending existing lines are far from being realized.

Buses are notoriously unreliable, and active modes of transportation like cycling are still dangerous in many parts of Brooklyn and other boroughs.

Ferry service to southeast Brooklyn that achieves travel-time reductions for locals and tourists will fuel sustainable economic development in neighborhoods still recovering from Hurricane Sandy while capitalizing on our waterfront as a great opportunity equalizer.

Instead of deepening old geographic divides, let’s chart a new course.

ERIC L. ADAMS, BROOKLYN

The writer is Brooklyn borough president.

To the Editor:

If the current and past administrations truly wanted to “think outside the grid” to ameliorate New York City’s beleaguered public transportation system, they would be more imaginative than positing ferries and bicycles as partial solutions.

Underused railroad tracks abound in the city. For instance, the Amtrak line along the Hudson has but a few trains a day; it could easily accommodate commuter service on the congested Upper West Side.

More visionary would be to institute an intraborough link using the rail corridor that goes from the Brooklyn Army Terminal in the west, through the bowels of Brooklyn and Queens, before arcing north to Astoria. The trajectory is easily seen on Google Earth!

The much-maligned Robert Moses accomplished so much because he managed and controlled multiple city and state agencies. He understood that working in complex urban centers meant forcing competing entities to work cooperatively.

It is high time for the government and private sectors — which own, control and administer the city’s transportation networks — to follow Mr. Moses’ lead to help resolve the city’s public transportation needs.

JOSEPH DISPONZIO, NEW YORK

The writer is a former professor of landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.