“American Exceptionalism Off the Rails,” by Elizabeth Henderson and Jared Abbott, identifies the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 as the turning point from public to private transit. But I’m reminded of Robert Caro’s biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, which shows in glorious, heartbreaking detail how Mr Moses single-handedly steered New York City away from public transit to highways for decades before that, influencing the nation as well as our largest city. By the time of the 1956 Act (with which Mr Moses was also involved), the national transportation philosophy had already been cast. I think it’s impossible to overstate the detrimental impact this has had on our nation.

 — Andy Saylor, Paxtang, PA

Fred Stafford makes a respectable case in your Infrastructure issue that closure of New York’s Indian Point nuclear reactor was premature. However, the case for closure was not as vapid as he says — the Union of Concerned Scientists reported in 2004 that a terrorist attack on the plant could cause an eventual half-million deaths — and his belief that the Left should embrace nuclear power to fight climate change is mistaken.