Fuming about tunnel traffic
To The Editor:
Re “Idling NJ Buses Kicked From Hell’s Kitchen Curb” (news, Oct. 9):
I wanted to make a comment on the story in the October 9th paper on the story of buses idling on Tenth Avenue. (“Agency buses will now linger within the Lincoln Tunnel until PA traffic enforcement gives them the go-ahead to drive to the bus terminal, NJT officials said.”).
How absurd it is to have buses idle in the Lincoln Tunnel waiting to come into the city. I had just come in from New Jersey on a Thursday afternoon and was in the tunnel for 50 minutes because traffic coming into the city was directed to the far right tunnel, while traffic out of the city flowed easily and sporadically through four tunnel lanes.
I have difficulty with the carbon monoxide in the tunnel and found my face reacting to the fumes. I can’t imagine what these fumes will do to the tunnel structure with such a concentration of fumes. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.
Rita Jendrzejewski
Slow change, but sweet film
To The Editor:
Re “Rediscovered Film Gives Glimpse of Penn South’s Past” (feature, Oct. 23):
Very sweet, innocent…a time when all this was opening the way for women to take on new roles in society…groups like The Feminists, New York Radical Feminist, the Womenss firehouse on 20th Street, Shulamith Firestone, Grace Paley, consciousness raising groups — exciting new ideas and possibilities everywhere!
The film deals not with all that promise and hope, but with the frustrations that were inevitable for women at that time…but change was coming. Sadly, that excitement and promise brought some changes, but proved not to be enough to create social changes that were and are needed.
Gloria Sukenick
Film evoked a complex time
To The Editor:
Re “Rediscovered Film Gives Glimpse of Penn South’s Past” (feature, Oct. 23):
Harriet Kriegel’s film is brave, evocative and heartfelt. No one who did not live through that time can fully grasp the indignities and prejudices that women had to face. I remember them well, and the feeling that I would suffocate if I didn’t escape. The cost was great but somehow, I broke the chains. It wasn’t courage. It was the need to survive.
As I looked at Kriegel’s film, I remembered making a painting in the early ‘70s of a large, naked woman sitting in a small, red room. Her head almost touched the ceiling, her legs and arms reached to the walls. There was a small door at the rear of the room, a streak of light — the only way out. I took it. Kriegel’s film evokes that time for me in all its complexity.
Terese Loeb Kreuzer
Icy islands force seniors inside
To The Editor:
Re “Business Owners, Activists Want Redesign for Fifth, Sixth Aves.” (news, Oct. 23):
The street Islands are no good for people with walkers or wheelchairs or canes, because they do not shovel the island when it snows or ices up. It does not help the blind or handicapped at all — a very bad idea they should of never started. It means, as a senior, I’m homebound for the winter because I won’t be able to cross the streets.
Helen M. Murphy
READER COMMENTS
FROM ChelseaNow.com
Designers must know the flow
Re “Idling NJ Buses Kicked From Hell’s Kitchen Curb” (news, Oct. 9):
And why is Seventh Ave. so crowded? Surprise! It’s the only way Downtown on the West Side! Perhaps the “street designers” should try to understand how traffic flow is being impeded before they further restrict it with their planters, bike lanes, pedestrian parks, etc. etc.
Developers are packing more and more apartments, people and stores into an already overstuffed Manhattan. Sidewalks are narrower and so are the streets. More and more is being crammed into the hopper, while outlets are being restricted. You don’t need a psychic to predict the inevitable.
R.G. Gaffney
Up in arms
Re “Peace Officers Assigned Inside, Outside BRC (web news article posted Oct. 16, in print Oct. 23):
When BRC [Bowery Residents’ Committee] told the neighborhood that it was going to set up a facility with over three hundred beds, the neighborhood went up in arms — fearful that the things which have come to pass would happen. The “Peace Officers” who are unarmed will certainly back down in many confrontations with men who may be packing knives or even firearms.
Walter77777
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