Chemical romance

I would like to think that Michael Kelly’s article in defence of “the love affair between man and car” (Perspective, 11 October) was written tongue in cheek, but sadly I doubt it.

He scorns the “sordid shared experience of communal travel” on public transport as if everyone had the option of using a car. Mr Kelly was once Lord ­Provost of Glasgow, a city which still has one of the lowest levels of car ownership in the UK, where many householders do not have driveways and where very few have BMW and Mercedes to park on them.

Yet in this same city there are levels of pollution from cars which are exceeding prescribed safety limits for nitrogen dioxide concentrations on a daily basis.

While some might empathise with Mr Kelly’s affection for the romantic dimension of travel by car to far-flung places, the idea that such notions are a sound basis for abandoning the promotion of and investment in public transport is fatuous in the extreme.

Robert Drysdale

Primrose Bank Road

Edinburgh