Parkway plans seem excessive

John V. Berberich III Charlottesville
Published: April 11, 2008

Headlines about the funding gap for U.S. 250 interchange and Meadowcreek Parkway, and the possibility of changing the design, combined with the news that more property is needed from Charlottesville High School (The Daily Progress, April 4), confirm my feeling that the parkway project is way overdesigned for the community’s genuine needs — unless, in the 40-year process from idea to design, it has been massaged from a simple improved connection between Rio Road and the U.S 250 Bypass to a first-generation Eastern Connector.
Why make that intersection a sophisticated interchange when we must tolerate stop-and-wait problems at so many intersections of U.S. 29 from the Rivanna River to Interstate 64, as well as on other roads, such as the bypass and Hydraulic Road?
Redesign that intersection at grade with signals and we can wait there, too, until there is another means to cross the Rivanna River upstream from U.S. 250.
An interchange without a freeway to accept the traffic is not much bang for the $35 million project, which will be only a monument once there is an Eastern Connector.