Politics shouldn't steer road safety

The Federal Highway Administration's removal of bicycle lanes, road diets, and appropriate speed limits from its list of safety measures is absurd ["Feds trim safety measure list," News, July 18]. Even worse is the transportation secretary's characterization that these measures derive from a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion and that these measures are social initiatives that burden communities.

No studies point to increased congestion caused by bike lanes, but studies do exist that point to the safety benefits of inclusion of bike lanes, like a 2021 multistate study which showed bicycle lanes can reduce total crashes by 49% on certain four-lane roads and 30% on two-lane roads. Long Island has some of the highest rates of pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths in the state, according to the Institute for Traffic Safety Management & Research.
One town at great risk would be the Village of Hempstead, which has one of the state's highest pedestrian and bicycle rate of fatalities. Advocates like me have worked for decades to make our roadways safer for all users. Other communities like Bay Shore, Rockville Centre, Farmingdale, Baldwin, and Port Washington, among many others, have all addressed roadway safety. Often, their efforts are buoyed by federal and state grant money. Is all that in question now?

We need more safety measures put in place, not fewer.

— Cindy Brown, Westbury

The writer is executive director of the New York Coalition for Transportation Safety.

Withholding aid is no way to govern

How dare Rep. Nick LaLota play games with the infrastructure of his constituents' towns ["Earmarks for LI, now with strings," News, July 20].

LaLota's power play is an attempt to coerce towns to prioritize police cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rather than protect the lives of some residents. So far, ICE is disrupting many of them, to say the least.

Nobody is asking police departments to not protect them from criminals, either native or born outside the United States.

The whole facade follows President Donald Trump's playbook. LaLota's policy only holds back crucial infrastructure funds to the detriment of Long Islanders.

— Thomas Olivieri, Smithtown

Nick LaLota should realize that he is a representative of all the people in his district. The idea that he would choose to disadvantage all the people in a town, including those who share his views and may have even voted for him, because the town's leadership adopted a policy that runs contrary to his views shows him to be fixated on political power rather than being a representative of the people.

We need leadership in government, not more power brokers.

— Peter Maier, South Setauket

Permanent 'daylight' already flopped once

The title of your article should be "House OKs bill to keep daylight saving time," not "House OKs bill to end daylight saving time" [News, July 15].

How pathetic is our government not knowing history so it doesn't repeat itself?

Moving to permanent daylight saving time was tried in the 1970s and was a miserable failure when many in Congress discovered that their children, especially in the western regions of time zones, were going to school in the mornings in darkness. The only smart thing they did was to have it expire the following year unless it was renewed. They let it expire, thank goodness.

Now they are at it again. Some senators have raised that objection, so hopefully the bill will fail. Just leave it the way it is. It works fine and is a good compromise. The change dates have been tweaked to be more symmetrical around the winter solstice.

— Ed Schwartz, Dix Hills

In 1973, when I was a 10th grader, they instituted year-round daylight saving time. The reason was we were suffering under the first oil embargo, and we needed to save fuel. The decision was made to have the sun up longer in the evening to save on electricity and home heating fuel.

After several weeks, parents were up in arms because their children were waiting in the dark for their school buses.

Remember, this was at a time when kids were allowed to ride their bikes miles to a store.

Back then, parents also had to wait in the dark and the cold for buses. Or they would decide to drive their kids to school.

Republicans always believed in states' rights. Not so much these days. DST was always up to the individual states. Leave it that way.

— Robert Broder, Stony Brook