Congestion pricing in NYC and Suffolk redistricting
There should be a no-exceptions congestion pricing scheme in Manhattan, a reader writes. Credit: /Jennifer S. Altman
NYC transit should imitate Singapore
I first encountered Singapore’s congestion pricing scheme more than 40 years ago, when morning-rush drivers had to stop at a kiosk just outside the Central Business District to buy a daily paper entrance pass to be lodged in their window [“For-hire drivers: Congestion pricing painful,” News, Sept. 5]. That was before Singapore’s magnificent subway system was begun.
Today, every vehicle there has a device like our E-ZPass box that automatically collects tolls all over that island. The subway continues to be expanded, and bus service is excellent.
Traffic into the Central Business District has been significantly reduced, and Singapore is rightly known as a “garden city.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority should get on with a no-exceptions congestion pricing scheme today and not let the automobile lobby nickel-and-dime it down. It will reduce congestion in Manhattan’s central business district, likely reduce pollution and speed up local traffic, which remains painfully slow.
— David Zielenziger, Great Neck
Brookhaven has map plan to follow
Brookhaven Town’s redistricting committee could avoid many of the criticisms against its current proposed plans if it had followed the example set by the town’s 2012 commission [“Battle over Brookhaven maps,” News, Sept. 4].
That year, the commission unanimously approved new town board district lines without any rancor by listening to public comment and following well-recognized school board lines for district boundaries. It wasn’t until December when the town board rejected the “fair” plan and replaced it with its own. Commissions are supposed to help take politics out of redistricting.
Will 2022 be different?
— Jeffrey M. Wice, Long Beach
The writer, a senior fellow at New York Law School’s New York Census and Redistricting Institute, was counsel to the Brookhaven commission in 2012.
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