Sensible wheels

It is pointless blaming the trams for cyclists getting caught in their rails. Trams are the future, and nearly every city in the developed world already has them, apart from Britain, which invariably lags behind.

Cyclists in Edinburgh have clearly lost the ability to accommodate trams. In the late 1950s, I and thousands of others cycled through the centre of Glasgow, across the old tram rails, on a daily basis without a problem, just as they still do in the rest of Europe.

What is wrong in Edinburgh are those modern cycles with 
ridiculously thin wheels, which seem incapable of coping 
with anything, even a drainage grating.

In my area, the council has spent a fortune providing new tracks specially for cyclists, yet the cyclists refuse to use them on the grounds that “modern cycles” are not designed for them. Well, it is time they were.

What we need is a return to the sensible bicycles, with sensible wheels, that were the norm in my youth, when trams were commonplace. Problem solved.

Alastair Maxwell-Irving

Stirling