Traffic hearing must be rescheduled

Letter in this week's Times Ledger:

In addition to the loss of hundreds of small businesses and the jobs of thousands of employees and their dependents, the proposed Willets Point project also involves the general public, whose daily lives will be affected by the huge increase in the volume of vehicular traffic on the Grand Central Parkway and the Van Wyck Expressway.

Suffice it to say, the Willets Point businesses and their employees and the general public are entitled to a full and fair discussion of the issues, something the Bloomberg administration and the city Economic Development Corp. have sought to avoid. They are now joined by state Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Martin Dilan (D-Brooklyn), who announced the cancellation of a much-awaited and -needed meeting to consider the traffic concerns the proposed project will generate (“State cancels Willets meet,” TimesLedger Newspapers, April 12).

Dilan’s claim that the meeting was cancelled because of an “unavoidable scheduling conflict” without even describing the claimed conflict and rescheduling an early date is patent political nonsense. An investigation is called for to determine the real reason and at whose request the meeting was cancelled. The public is entitled to no less.

Benjamin M. Haber
Flushing