How traffic Jams are made in City Hall.

• Author: Johnston, David Cay
• Position: Letters - Letter to the editor

Sam Staley and Ted Balaker's "How Traffic Jams Are Made in City Hall" (April) relies on data that are not comparable. Mass transit commute times are compared unfavorably to vehicle commutes, but are these for commutes of equal distance? Time per mile traveled or average commute speed would be the proper measure to compare modes of travel. Time of day may also matter, lest averages obscure the typical. A subway at rush hour should be a lot faster than a mess of vehicles that has congealed into a traffic jam, but at slack times cars may trump mass transit because trains run infrequently, increasing platform wait times. And it would be useful to break out rail travel from buses that use the same traffic lanes as autos.

Likewise, we are told the average commute time in the New York City metropolitan area without controlling for distance. Surely in-city subway commuters get to work faster than suburbanites coming by car, train, bus, or water taxi.

The points on parking meters are intriguing but are cited without regard for the historic economic purpose of metering: customer turnover to increase merchant revenues.

David Cay Johnston

Rochester, NY

Staley and Balaker discuss a number of measures for controlling traffic. One they don't mention is to get rid of zoning laws that prevent people from running home businesses in their homes. That would not only save a lot of commuting; it would advance the economy by making it easier to start a business on a shoestring.

Charles Cohn

Austell, GA

Sam Staley and Ted...