It's just before 6 pm on Friday evening. A normal, every week Friday evening.

We just returned from an urgent trip to the post office and another place up north, errands we couldn't postpone. It was an eye opener. If ever the argument "we don't need a 4-lane Meadowcreek Parkway" required proof it is dead wrong, any Friday evening offers ample proof.

US 29 north and south was solid traffic from south of Barracks Road to beyond Wal-Mart.

Rio Road was solid traffic from US 29 to downtown.

Greenbrier Drive was a line of stopped cars from the Rio Road light to the right angle turn south of Greenbrier Elementary.

The Bypass was bumper-to-bumper from US 29 to as far east as we could see from the bridge connecting Dairy Road with Meadowbrook Heights.

To be sure, it's very nice to be able to walk or bike to work and take time to smell the flowers, but when you work at Michie or the University and live in Earlysville, or Woodbrook, or Greene, that's not an option.

And when you need to stop for 3 bags of groceries and a load at the cleaners, mass transit is a horrid option to any but the healthy, adventurous young treating it as an option. For rural dwellers, the handicapped, or the elderly it can never be a viable option.

My deepest respect is reserved for Meredith. Her extensive experience in government taught her how and when to make tough decisions when need demands, rather than reflect popular whims of folks who wish things were other than they are. Or reflect only narrow constituent sentiment and ignore the larger community.

I've long thought candidates for local government, and council members, should be expected to regularly sample what our residents and our neighbors and our visitors live with before they're taken seriously.

That way we know their decisions don't stem from naivete.

In this context, one wonders if candidates and counselors opposed to the Parkway are ever on the road trying to go from downtown to 29 North between 3 and 6 on a typical Friday.

In that area they likely have no more experience than a Republican in a housing project, but their minds are just as made up about who needs what, and just as committed to an implausible, impractical, or impossible response to a need they don't fully comprehend.

Rey Barry (electronic mail, April 14, 2000).