The editorial entitled Make the Red Bus Free is right on the point. The free shuttle service will be faster and fairer for all. The loss in revenue would be less than the actual fare currently collected because it probably costs 25 cents on a dollar collected to count and process the quarters and dimes.

With the increasing population on the Island, running four buses instead of two in non-rush-hour time would greatly improve the service for all residents and visitors.

The time has come for these improvements and I hope RIOC steps up to the plate and takes action.

I’m impressed by the suggestions in the last issue of The WIRE that residents of the community have for solving the Red Bus problems. Once again, since the people who work at RIOC don’t live here and they’re undergoing a change in administration, i think we need to tackle this head-on ourselves.

I suggest the residents form a Red Bus group responsible for suggesting and testing options until we find something that works for everybody. I still see Red Buses bunching up at all hours of the day and I keep wondering why, when that happens, the second and third bus in a row following each other empty don’t automatically turn around at the loops on the route so they’re going in the other direction where people are waiting to be picked up.

One of the current turnaround loops is in front of the Tram station (I don’t know if they can make the turn at the tiny rotary in front of Blackwell House), a second active loop is in front of Gristede’s, a third is in front of the fire station, and the fourth and final loop is located at the new Octagon Park building.

If the drivers are brought into the dialogue as well as the testing process, we might actually fix the problem without bringing in an outside transportation consultant, who doesn’t live here either.

To the Editor:

RIOC President Herb Berman continues to congratulate himself for all the great work he’s done, and I want to be among the very few residents that he serves to also acknowledge his efforts

First, thanks for forcing another valued merchant, the Fish Market, out of business. These fine, hardworking folks struggled for months with a crumbling ceiling that would have cost them thousands to repair themselves. Your "Operating Corporation" never lifted a finger to assist with repairs, and also withheld a lease extension, so you could have evicted the folks at any time after they made the repairs themselves.

Thanks also for your hiring spree. After years of increasing payrolls at RIOC along with reduced actual service, I am so happy to see you saddle us with lots more bureaucrats in the waning days of your tenure here. An organization as dysfunctional as yours certainly needs lots of new staff without any direction or oversight from the top.

I’m not surprised you didn’t hire an Operations officer, but operations hasn’t exactly been your strong point (not that I can actually identify a strong point). Jim Fry has been doing yeoman’s work now in a dual role – not only as Head of Public Safety but also Island Operations. And he’s performing to expectation, by completely ignoring any Island services like snow removal or keeping the lights on, with the same lack of skill or imagination that has kept Public Safety from being a truly useful and helpful Island resource.

And thanks for the continuing great bus service as well! Nothing like sticking with a solution months and months after it is completely obvious that it’s a total failure. I’ve got to admire your steadfastness in ignoring the needs of so many people, when lesser leaders would cave, and actually try to do something right. Mission Accomplished!

While I am fortunately not one of the residents in Island House and Westview that you’ve left out to dry by denying them a ground lease, I’m sure I speak for them in offering gratitude for your total intransigence on this matter as well. You could have actually stuck your neck out and worked to keep these buildings the last bastion of affordable housing for middle-income families, but congrats on taking the safe route, and instead handing over huge chunks of real estate to developers who are making a killing here.

You could have expended the smallest effort to have kept the Tram safe and backup systems operable, but I applaud your ability to shirk even the smallest responsibility for this utter maintenance failure, as well as your show of deep concern by keeping the Tram out of action for half a year, and your careful, after-the-fact analysis that 15 million dollars are needed to fix the Tram, although you can’t really identify or justify how this money is to be spent.

Most Island residents don’t come close to earning your salary of $140,000, and actually have to work for it. After years of ignoring the needs of the people you are ostensibly hired to care for, I call on your new boss, Deborah Van Amerongen, to promptly give you the vacation you so richly deserve.

In the years before Pataki pillaged this Island, I recall letters to the editor of The WIRE that praised the RIOC administration, and genuinely thanked them for work well done. I earnestly hope that Mr. Berman’s replacement will actually serve our community with diligence, competence, honesty, and common sense… and that we will see some real letters of thanks in the very near future.

To the Editor:

NYC Transit’s response to various suggestions made by Island residents on how to alleviate the weekday morning rush hour crush (The WIRE, Feb. 10) is not only disappointing but erroneous. Its president, Lawrence G. Reuter, offers no solution to the obvious problem and even minimizes it. Indeed, he claims there is adequate service, stating incorrectly that the "F line operates every four minutes during the morning rush and every five minutes during the evening rush hour."

A casual glance at the MTA NYC Transit’s own timetable, available at the Island’s subway booth, contradicts Mr. Reuter; it notes that service is four to six minutes from 7:01 a.m. until 9:43 a.m. Train service every four minutes would produce 15 trains per hour while trains every six minutes produces only ten. To anyone waiting at the Island platform during such times, that is a very significant difference.

Dismissing proposed solutions raised by Island residents, Mr. Reuter states there is no time to run a shuttle between the headway times of the F, nor should any of the R or Q or V trains be diverted from their present routes to service the Island.

The main problem I see is the absence of any express track for F trains from Queens (e.g., Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue) to bypass the Island and go directly to 47-50 Rockefeller Center, while allowing a local shuttle to pick up residents at the stops in between (21st/Queensbridge, Roosevelt Island, Lexington/63rd, and 57th Street); this lack of an express track exists despite the $900 million spent on constructing the 63rd Street tunnel and connecting stations. As Mr. Reuter puts it: "The 63rd Street Connector service plan was intended to provide additional services on the Queens Boulevard subway lines [i.e., the E and the F] and alleviate overcrowding along the Queens Boulevard corridor. This plan maximized through-put service through both the 53rd Street and 63rd Street Connectors."

In plain English, the subway plan adopted was designed to help out Queens residents along the F and E routes; little or no thought was given to congestion from this Island’s residents.

Mr. Reuter has the temerity to state "our recent ridership surveys indicate that, on average, this [F] line operates within our passenger loading guidelines." Would someone please "kidnap" Mr. Reuter and bring him to Roosevelt Island for a few mornings; let him try to get to his office in Manhattan! He just might begin to realize that despite such "guidelines," the present situation is intolerable; and further increases in Island residents will result in complete paralysis.

Potential buyers and renters beware: You might find the Island a nice place to move to at first impression, but getting off the Island to go to work every day is already its most disadvantageous feature; and it will only get worse unless the Transit Authority creates a solution to the morning rush hour crush. (And hiring muscular men to push residents into subway cars, as is apparently done in Japan, is not exactly what I have in mind.)

Robert Chira