"The Holiday Crunch," your Nov. 20 editorial about congestion pricing, presented New York's traffic problem as being one of gridlocked streets and slow traffic speeds. Although congestion pricing can address these conditions, its real promise lies in the opportunity it offers to rethink how we use our streets.

By using pricing strategies to limit overall traffic volume, we could subsequently use that diminished demand for road space to make selected streets completely car-free.

This opens the possibility to create a network of linear parks, pedestrian promenades, bicycle boulevards and light-rail transitways. These innovations could ultimately be defining features of a great 21st-century city.

Jeff PrantPark Slope, BrooklynThe writer is on the board of Transportation Alternatives.