Eighteen months sounds like an unrealistic time scale to clean up the pollution on the streets of Brighton, even if motorists can be tempted into the latest low emission buses.

What is needed is an electric tram system, providing an attractive alternative to buses and removing pollution from the streets altogether. Sadly, the city never got itself in the queue for light rail systems when the funds were available.

Worse still, money that might have gone on such schemes has been gobbled up by the railways. We might ponder the fact that the cost of the unnecessary premature replacement of the slam door stock on supposed safety grounds would have paid for ten light tram schemes like Croydon's Tramlink, the electrification of the Hastings-Ashford and Wealden lines with reopening of the Uckfield-Lewes section and still left enough to rebuild the West Pier - and this is dwarfed by the amount squandered on the West Coast Main Line.

Isn't there something wrong with the way spending priorities are set?

Henry Law

-Queen's Gardens, Brighton