Sir – With much interest shown again in your columns concerning a transport system needed for Oxford, clearly a good tramway system would neatly clinch it, compared to the mish-mash we have at present of so many different buses, giving us the title I have overheard visitors call us ‘The city of screaming tyres!’

The present bus companies should not miss out on help running the tramway system. We do not need the system that they have in Bordeaux, France, as shown in your picture (November 1), showing the ugly overhead wires, which would ruin our beautiful vistas and insult the designers of our old buildings, who when designing them, had scenes of little more than the occasional cart or stagecoach in the street to plan and visualise what their building would look like, uncluttered for all to enjoy as time goes on.

A well-thought-out plan is needed for country buses to feed to the point of interchanging with the city tramways.

Then the tramways taking all to the city stops as required and then the tramways terminating before the ‘walking-only area’ streets. Our streets are wide enough for long narrow trams to operate with a driver’s cab each end (these vehicles do not need to turn around in the street). There just needs an extra emergency track in the middle should a vehicle defunct and independent power help to move it over, so as to keep minimum delays to vehicles already in operation. Surely with a leading University like ours in the world, getting a panel of academic brains, people-moving experts, manufacturer tramway experts, together, to give an excellent tramway system for Oxford, isn’t beyond the bounds of what’s possible for this 21st-century problem that other cities in the world have long solved.

Peter Berry, Oxford