Riders left waiting for a bus to nowhere

Brooklyn: On Monday, Aug. 3, at about 9:30 p.m. I tried to get on a Nostrand Ave. bus by Avenue U to Sheepshead Bay. After waiting, I realized the streets were blocked due to paving the streets, called milling.

In the intersection were Department of Transportation workers. I asked if the bus was going through or where the rerouting was. They didn’t know. I checked the MTA site for rerouting of the B44, B44 select bus and the B36. It said no service change or rerouting. I had to walk a bit. The sidewalk was open but there was street repaving. I had to walk on gravel. Some could’ve been hot, as the truck near me was spreading gravel with hot smoke coming at me.

When I returned, I saw a bus driver and asked him where the rerouting was and he didn’t know. Each driver made up a route to get around it. One went on a narrow one-way street that could’ve been blocked by a double-parked car, delivery truck or garbage truck. A week later and after many calls from me, nothing was done to inform the public. The MTA told me to call DOT, who said they notified the MTA in advance. Even so, the MTA knew from Monday on, and still no rerouting signs or listings on its site. The DOT told me to call 311.

Bruce Crane

Speed bump hump

Staten Island: Our family has been trying for more than two years to have speed bumps erected on our street. The road is heavily traveled and now has Staten Island’s main post office off of Manor Rd. We had petitions signed, notified the Board of Transportation and were told that we are on a priority list. What does priority mean?

MaryAnn DeFrancesco

Better food access

Chester, N.J.: Marian Flaxman, Dr. Michelle Loy and Dr. Saurabh Mehta cite Mayor Mamdani’s grocery plan as being flawed for omitting healthcare and dietary advice from his plans (“Healthcare is the missing ingredient in Mamdani’s grocery plan,” op-ed, Aug. 23). Many inner-city areas are food deserts, and these grocery stores will make food affordable. Mamdani is taking a valuable first step in making food available to inner-city residents. How else can we make it better while remaining affordable? Let me suggest internships in training programs for dietitians who can offer advice to shoppers on meal planning to optimize both health and budgets, with bonus points for interns who are multilingual, and rotations for medical students who need to understand the dietary and cultural habits of their patients. We need more of this thinking to truly address the health of our working class, whose diet is often the biggest issue in maintaining health.

David J. Melvin

Eradicate the radical

Manhattan: Voicer Andrew Ross conflates meliorism with socialism in suggesting that Mamdani try to impose a surcharge on high-earning occupants (maybe 10% of the total) of rent-stabilized apartments. Long ago, “The Communist Manifesto” dismissed as bourgeois socialism the attempts by do-gooders to patch up the flaws of capitalism. The super-rich (and powerful) have managed to install this “reform” particularly in Scandinavia, and to varying degrees throughout most of the developed countries of the world, in order to maintain systemic capitalism. Even if the surcharge caused higher-income residents to vacate their apartments (which likely are over 50 years old and in need of substantial rehab), the median rents probably exceed the 30% of income level of New Yorkers most in need of housing. So the suggestion satisfies neither ideological nor practical concerns of the “socialist mayor.”

Michele P. Brown

Damaged goods

Brooklyn: Giancarlo Stanton will make the Hall of Shame, not the Hall of Fame, for most games missed and most injuries as a Yankee. We really don’t need $30 million a year for an injured designated hitter who can’t play the field and can’t walk, stand up or sit down without pulling a calf muscle.

Billy Somma

Worse predecessor

Pearl River, N.Y.: To all of you President Trump haters and anti-capitalists in this country: Yes, Trump is making millions of dollars and doing it overtly and legally. Joe Biden and family made — or should I say stole — millions of dollars corruptly in shady backroom deals, using offshore accounts, funneling it through shady nonprofits and fraud, and nothing but crickets from you Trump haters. Biden was and is one of the most corrupt people in government history, and I hope and pray he and everyone with him are exposed. He pardoned his family and so many more because he knew Trump’s Justice Department was going to go after those politicians and prove their corruption without a doubt. Biden and company stole our taxpayer money — your money — and yet you still support or justify his presidency. Why? They robbed you.

Robert Brennan

Better record

Schenectady, N.Y.: To Voicer Peter McCarthy: You were duped twice! Rep. James Clyburn duped no one that Biden was a good choice. In fact, Biden was a great choice, based on facts: He didn’t start any wars, he created and recovered 16 million jobs, he signed the Infrastructure Bill, he signed the CHIPs ACT, he signed the PACT Act, and he didn’t build monuments to glorify himself. Peter, you can’t fix stupid, but the red hat makes it easy to identify.

Diane Sanders Hombach

Stinging rebuke

Forest Hills: To all who are antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, however you want to call it: Say your wish came true. What if your dream of Israelis’ nonexistence happened? So many inventions and technology — the IV, the life-saving work, not getting lost in your car, research in biotechnology and water. Would your lives be better or worse? How many of your lives were saved as a result of Israeli technology? How much is the price for your hatred? If we go, you go with us, and what’s the point of that? Are you like the fable of the scorpion and the turtle, where the scorpion promises not to sting the turtle if it takes him to the other side of a lake? The turtle trusts the scorpion, who stings him anyway and they both die. The turtle is furious: “You said you wouldn’t sting me.” The scorpion replies, “That’s my nature.”

Stew Frimer

Don’t aim your ‘anti’

Levittown, L.I.: When someone or groups of people voice a protest against a certain entity, such as anti-Israel/pro-Palestine or vice-versa, it’s probably their way of being anti-war/pro-peace. I think we can all agree that war is death and destruction. We must be objective about it, not subjective. It should be stated as such without singling out an entity. It’s all about being anti-war, and all protest must be peaceful.

John Di Milia

What’s the point?

Bloomfield, N.J.: Why do you bother to print “Baker Street Puzzle” when the answers are never readable?

Eli Kelley