TOO many fines for crossing Lendal Bridge? There is another way of looking at it. A £30 fine will make people think twice before driving needlessly into any part of our sensitive medieval city centre. It’s an incentive to consider train, Park&Ride or good old shanks from their hotels.

The growing visitor figures show no Lendal Bridge factor. Remember the retailers’ backlash against pedestrianisation decades ago? It led to a retailing boom as day trippers flocked to a city with a civilised environment so different from back home.

City of York Council has been brave in its attempt to make Lendal Bridge into a pleasant experience for hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists. I say this even though I vote for a different party. I applaud our politicians for their courageous adherence to government environmental guidelines.

The small number of reactionary gentlemen, who write such sneering letters to The Press, often employing the most ludicrous conspiracy theory, would do better to come up with their own solutions to gridlock, air pollution and civic degradation.

Let us hear their workable alternatives to York’s traffic problems.

I don’t, by the way, think they give a hoot about tourists.

Jim McGurn, Get Cycling – A Community Interest Company, Hospital Fields Road, York.