Unsafe bridge bumps
To The Editor:
Your article, “City to take a look at bumps on bridge bike path” (news article, Mar. 4 – 10) is a little too uncritical of the city Dept. of Transportation statement that if bikes would just slow down on the Williamsburg Bridge, everything would be okay (“We are encouraging bikers to slow down.”).
These expansion joint covers on the Manhattan side are “unsafe at any speed.” They are unsafe for all users, not just cyclists.
Note that these “bumps” are so steep and so high that they will throw a cyclist off the bike if they try to brake the bike while crossing the joint. Going down hill, the effect of applying the brakes at the joint cover is the same as jamming the brakes just as you hit a high curb -– you fly over the front of the bike. This will happen even at very low speeds. Speed is not the issue in these crashes. The biggest danger is from trying to follow the D.O.T. advice to slow down — it actually causes headers.
The article also says cyclists “want” less steep steel cover plates (The suggested alternative was to place elongated metal plates over the bumps.). This was our second choice, the first choice is to install flat, flush expansion joints, as is used on the Brooklyn side. Only if the D.O.T. cannot or will not cut down whatever currently sticks up in these joints do we recommend installing the elongated low angle steel plates.
There are commercially available expansion joint fillers that can be installed and maintained from the top, and there is no reason why these were not specified for this section of the bridge pathway.
Finally, it is noteworthy that two Disabled In Action wheelchair users tried the bridge with their chairs and found the bumps a significant hazard. In my professional opinion, these joints do not comply with A.D.A. regulations.
Steven Faust
Member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and Transportation Alternatives
Positioning bias
To The Editor:
When it comes to far left-wing bias, your letters department is all too revealing.
Buried at the end of the letters last week was one brief, straightforward note supporting the conviction of Lynne Stewart (Letters, Feb. 25 – Mar. 3, “A just Stewart verdict”). Your next move was to position front and center another reader’s response (read: diatribe) that dismissed the first reader’s opinion as “deception” and somehow managed to drag President Bush into the picture (Letters, Mar. 4 – Mar. 10, “In defense of Stewart”). A responsible editor would have printed a response that sticks to the subject.
You people at Downtown Express never miss an opportunity to bash the president, even as the path toward democracy continues to blaze like wildfire through the Middle East as a result of his firm foreign policy. While you and your cronies hem and haw over how best to rebuild Downtown, it seems to me that the man you love to hate gets up every morning determined to make sure we never have to rebuild again.
Democracy in the Middle East is crucial to our national security, and when all is said and done, I believe our president will have saved more lives than he’s lost. Let’s see where you bury this letter…behind the classifieds maybe?
By the way, I am not some spoon-fed, rich Republican brat. I’m a working-class shmuck who until this year was a Democrat. Can I help it if my own party repelled me straight onto the other team?
Austin Downey
Death of a playwright
To The Editor:
Re “Arthur Miller, a man more complex than his characters” (Arts article, Feb. 17 – 23):
What a beautifully-written and thought-provoking article by Jerry Tallmer on recently-deceased playwright, Arthur Miller. Mr. Tallmer speaks his own poetry, which perhaps is influenced by Mr. Miller, with various interesting tidbits, anecdotes and innuendoes abounding. Bravo! Miller lives on — for all his sons and daughters.
Sidney G Schneck
WWW Downtown Express
