‘No Chance Without a Stadium’

Re: “No Chance Without a Stadium,” Robert Livingstone, New York, May 25, 2005. Robert Livingstone’s Olympic worries are misplaced. The crucial issue surrounding the proposed West Side stadium is not the effect on New York’s Olympic bid, but whether the city and state ought to subsidize such a stadium. As a 24-year-old Brooklynite, I am appalled by the city and state’s willingness to mortgage our future, with a taxpayer cost of $1.3 billion.

The city and state ought to look elsewhere to spend our taxes, such as the underfunded Summer Youth Employment program, which this year will offer half the jobs to youth it did in the 1970s. Such an investment sends the correct message to young people: Real jobs for youth matter more than the faux dreams of professional sports.

ARLIN ROTH

‘Crowding in Brooklyn’

The New York Sun recently published a letter from Michael Burke, the director of Downtown Brooklyn Council, objecting to your coverage of my analysis of the hidden costs of uncontrolled traffic from development in downtown Brooklyn [“Crowding in Brooklyn,” May 20, 2005]. He disdained my calculation of $250 million a year in costs the general public would bear from added traffic as “fanciful statistics.”

As much as I respect Michael Burke and what he is trying to do for downtown Brooklyn, which I strongly support, we differ on how to ensure its success. The operating principle among development advocates is “we can’t get the political support to do anything about traffic and subways until it gets so bad, people are screaming for a solution.” My approach, knowing it takes 20 years to get major infrastructure built, is to look ahead 20 years, the standard planning horizon, and define the public cost of inaction.

Instead, the environmental impact statement for the rezoning of downtown Brooklyn that Mr. Burke holds up in defense, looked at only the half of the authorized development that would likely occur in 10 years, ignored major surrounding development, and, in myriad ways, under-reported traffic and transit impacts. Even so, the Environmental Impact Statement concluded that traffic is so bad now that more development can’t make it much worse and there isn’t much you can do about it anyway. But that’s because the EIS used tools that don’t account for traffic backing up in longer queues and spreading over more streets for more hours. These are the source of the added costs we all bear.

Let’s own up to the fact that, when you add hugely to travel in this city you create additional costs that all of us pay for in terms of increased travel time, increased cost to deliver goods, increased health care costs, including the huge costs associated with traffic accident costs that are not covered by insurance.

If the public understood what this traffic is actually costing them, and how much worse it could get, they might be willing to pay for measures, like congestion based tolls and parking fees, that could reduce and redirect traffic and generate the funds critically needed to build attractive, convenient transit alternatives.

BRIAN T. KETCHAM
Executive Director
Community Consulting Services
Brooklyn

‘Nadler Up in Arms’

Re: “Nadler Up in Arms Over Stem Cell Debate,” Luiza Ch. Savage, Page 1, May 31, 2005. Rep. Jerrold Nadler makes a hysterical leap in alleging that opponents to his support for harvesting stem cells from human embryos for the purpose of medical research “call my religious tradition a culture of death.” However, if Judaism (or the version of it that he embraces) does indeed obligate him to vote in favor of committing taxpayer dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research – as his comments strongly suggest is the case – then could it not be said that he is attempting to legislate his religious beliefs? How dare he!

PETER ANDERSON
Manhattan

‘What Made Them Talk’

In “What Made Them Talk,” [Arts & Letters, May 27, 2005] Christopher Willcox asserts that “artists, even empty-headed actors, should not be denied a livelihood because of their political beliefs.” Setting aside that most of those blacklisted did far more than just hold radical political views, there can be no such thing as immunity from how others choose to respond to one’s beliefs and actions – not in a free society. The mechanisms needed to provide such immunity negate the very concept of “rights.” Right, Mr. X?

JOHN HARALABOPOULOS
Bayside, N.Y.

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