To the editor:

I read sound advice (Oct. 7, J-W) from PBS fitness expert Mark Fenton who recommended that we design our city with our future in mind — a future that will by necessity require far more walking, bicycling and mass transportation.

In the same J-W edition, I read about another resurrection of the South Lawrence Trafficway and frantic arguments that we must have this link in the transportation chain. As Fenton suggests, if you design your communities for cars, more people will drive and that indeed is a problem.

Much has changed and much has been learned in the decades since the SLT first became a gleam in some traffic engineer’s eye. Many of us are getting far less exercise in the course of our day and are suffering because of it. Global warming is now a disturbing reality.

If we want a green planet, we’ll all need to drive much less. And yet federal, state, and local leaders yet again tout the absolute necessity of a road through one of the best, most beautiful, accessible, and soulful natural places to walk in Lawrence.

Ironies abound.